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: LIBRARY OF CONGRESS. I 






UNITED STATES OP AMERICA, f 



VINDICATION 



BISHOP COLENSO 



A VINDICATION 



OF 



BISHOP COLENSO 



(REPRINTED FROM "GOOD WORDS," WITH CORRECTIONS.) 



BY THE AUTHOR OF 

'THE ECLIPSE OF FAITH. 









EDLNBUBGH: 
ADAM AND CHAELES BLACK. 

1863. 






Printed by R. & R. Clark, Edinburgh. 



INSCRIBED 

TO 

THE REV. NORMAN MACLEOD, D.D., 
EDITOR OF "GOOD WORDS." 



ADVERTISEMENT. 



At the request of several friends, I have consented to reprint the 
following brochure in a separate form. 

Conceding the authorship of Bishop Colensd's work, as I suppose 
we must, I still find it difficult to regard the work itself in any 
graver light than an ironical jeu d'esprit, though not perhaps 
a very lively one ; so utterly incompatible does it seem, viewed in 
any other light, with the antecedents and present position of the 
author, and so flagrantly, as it appears to me, does it caricature all 
the principles of a just and comprehensive historic criticism. 

A few minor errors of the press, occasioned by the urgency of 
periodic publication, which prevented me from seeing a revise of the 
greater portion of the " Letters" have been now corrected. A few 
explanatory sentences, and here and there a fresh paragraph, have 
also been added. 

2th March 1863. 



INTKODUCTIOK 



The following " Letters to a Friend" were written on a 
first perusal of Bishop Colenso's book. Their obvious 
design is to shew T , either that it was not written by the 
Bishop at all, or, that if written by him, was probably 
written, like the Amber Witch, to test the gullibility of 
scepticism. It may, perhaps, be plausibly said, that 
to a thorough sceptic, who easily eludes mere testi- 
mony, — who will trust to nothing but the evidence of his 
senses, and not always to that, — there is little in the 
shape of absolute proof, even now, to shew that the first 
hypothesis may not be true. Few, it may be presumed, 
have seen the Bishop, or had oral testimony to his 
authorship ; and there are perhaps not a few who would 
hardly receive oral testimony itself, except they had wit- 
nesses to the Bishop's identity. On the other hand, we 
have frequent proofs that publishers may unsuspectingly 
give to the world MSS. under the name of authors who 
never wrote them. Still less is there any proof that, if 
written by the Bishop, it was written with any serious 

B 



6 INTRODUCTION. 

design to demolish the historic character of the Penta- 
teuch. At all events, it seems clear that the alternative 
of the writer of the following " Letters" may be logically 
argued. If the Pentateuch, which has so long imposed 
upon the world as history, and imposes on it still, be 
really not historic, we need not wonder, should it turn 
out that some one has fathered this brochure on an ob- 
scure colonial bishop ; on the other hand, if, in spite of 
the proofs of the enormous a priori improbability, not 
to say incredibility, of his being the author, he really is 
the author, people will be apt to imagine that whatever 
the difficulties which he may point out in the history 
of the Pentateuch, it may well be history notwith- 
standing. 



LETTER I. 

November 3, 1862. 

My dear Friend — I have just risen from a rapid 
reading of the pages ascribed to Bishop Colenso. I can- 
not agree with our hopeful young nephew, Tom, that 
" Moses and his Pentateuch are smashed." The last two 
centuries have seen Moses so often demolished, and so 
often put together again, that I am in no fear about 
him. I assure you, that if Colenso be the author, I am 
in much more alarm for the Bishop than for Moses ; and 
fancy that it will be said of him as of another in a like 
case, " That he went out intending to commit murder, 
and committed suicide/' Nor am I much afraid for 
that redoubtable doubter, young Tom. As I have seen 
Moses so often killed, yet rise to life once more, so 1 
have seen many a young " Thomas Didymus" reclaimed 
from his doubts long before he had ended his third 
decade. 

But, in fact, I have some doubts about the genuine- 
ness of the book. Certainly it contains little matter, if 
any, which avowed, and therefore consistent, and so far 



O LETTER I. 

honest infidels have not insisted on in justification of 
their infidelity. For aught that appears, there might 
not be a single argument adducible for the other side of 
the question ; while every objection, nay, every quibble, 
is diligently sought out, petted, and made the most of. 
But more of this hereafter. 

Meantime, I suggest another alternative. May we 
not suppose the Bishop to have simulated scepticism, 
just to see how the shark-like voracity of infidelity 
would bolt any bait, — even a gobbet of rancid pork, — 
though the hook were ever so little disguised ; or that 
he wrote it to see how far the ^^si-liberalism of our 
day would go, — that fantastic liberalism which so often 
contends that a man may swear that he believes what 
he does not believe, and violate oaths and subscriptions 
with a safe conscience, on the plea that though he volun- 
tarily binds himself, he ought not to be so bound ! I 
fancy that either the one or the other of these theories 
is more probable than that a Bishop of the Church, still 
remaining such, should, in contravention of his ordina- 
tion vows and in contempt of public decency, write such 
a book, or at least write it with a serious design. If he 
is serious, so far from "unfeignedly believing all the 
Canonical Books." he believes tha/t five of them at least 
(or rather six, — for the book of Joshua fares no better) 
are collections of the most prodigious fables, and that 



LETTER I. 9 

whether fraud or fiction produced them, Christ and his 
apostles were alike duped by them ! 

You w 7 ill say, perhaps, as to the first supposition, — 
that of forging Bishop Colenso's name, — " But is it pos- 
sible that such an impudent imposture could remain 
undetected even for a moment?" Let me remind you, 
my friend, that if the Pentateuch has been imposing on 
all mankind for ages — upon Jews and Christians alike 
until now — w x e may well believe that a forger might for 
a moment cheat the world by a momentary assumption 
of the name of a bishop of no very great notoriety, and 
perhaps six thousand miles away. There is, in fact, 
no comparison whatever in the magnitude of the two 
impostures, if imposture there be. If the Jews of all 
ages have been befooled on this point, and that so com- 
pletely that there has not come down to us a whisper, 
an echo, a suspicion, of the truth ; if they have been 
thus duped, though the Pentateuch bound upon their 
shoulders a yoke which " neither they nor their fathers 
were ever able to bear," and if not true, libels them in 
such a way as common patriotism would never pardon, — 
hardly pardon indeed, had the whole been undoubted 
fact, instead of gross fiction ; if their jealous and bitter 
enemies, the Samaritans, have all been duped in the 
same way ; if Christ and his apostles shared in the uni- 
versal delusion ; if Christians of every name, age, and 



10 LETTER L 

nation have been cheated too ; if the great bulk of them, 
in spite of the innumerable volumes of subtle argument 
and contemptuous sarcasm which, during the last two 
centuries, have been written against the historic credi- 
bility of the Pentateuch, are cheated still, — can we 
wonder if this trumpery production of — so I will call 
him — some pseudo-Colenso, should for a moment be 
supposed a genuine work ? 

However, I do not contend that this is the true 
theory. It would be sufficient for my purpose, if the 
book be supposed a piece of pure irony, like Whately's 
" Historic Doubts." As the good Archbishop was some- 
times charged with "universal scepticism" for writing 
that pamphlet, so we must hope that, with as little rea- 
son, Colenso may be for a while charged with delibe- 
rately accusing the author of the Pentateuch either with 
egregious falsehood or fiction, and the Jews, the Chris- 
tians, and Christ himself, with being his dupes. If, on 
the other hand, it should be unhappily proved that the 
Bishop is indeed not only the author, but wrote the 
book with the bond fide purpose, or rather the maid fide 
purpose — considering that he is still a bishop — of de- 
stroying the historic credibility of six " canonical books 
in which he unfeignedly believes ;" if such a paradox 
should prove to be true, contrary to every appearance 
of probability, it is not easy to see why the Pentateuch 



LETTER II. 1 1 

may not also be true in spite of this writer's plausible 
objections. In either case, we can but reply as the 
physician did when he was told that, spite of diagnosis 
and prognosis, his patient was alive. " Why, then," said 
the unabashed doctor, " all I can say is that, on the 
principles of science, he ought to have died." — Yours 
truly, Vindex. 



LETTEE II. 

November 5, 1862. 

My dear Friend — I do not know that I can do 
better than spend an hour or two of this day in strip- 
ping our modern Guy Fawkes, who, under an episcopal 
mask, is seeking to blow Moses and the Pentateuch into 
the air, of some of his disguises. I assure you the more 
I consider the matter, the more incredible it seems to me 
that the Bishop of Natal should have written, at least 
seriously, the book which bears his name ; equally so, 
whether I look at the thing in a moral or an intellectual 
point of view. However, I will give a few of the reasons 
at least, for inclining to the more charitable, if not the 
more true, hypothesis. 

1. Is it credible — as I have already hinted — that a 
Christian pastor should seriously write a book against 



12 LETTEE II. 

the historical truth of the Pentateuch so exclusively 
made up of objections, that not even by accident is any- 
thing said on the affirmative side ? Is it credible that 
he should stumble only on objections — some of them as 
old as Celsus, many others touched by Bolingbroke and 
Voltaire, nearly all to be found in one or another of our 
infidel writers — and urged, I must say, with much the 
same resolute captiousness and contempt of candour, 
which characterize the most unscrupulous and disingenu- 
ous of those writers ? Is it credible, that w^hile he eagerly 
takes up everything that looks like an objection, and 
exaggerates it to the utmost, he should also sedulously 
ignore or extenuate everything that may be said in solu- 
tion of it? Is it credible, I say, that a bishop, still 
remaining such — clinging in this shipwreck of faith to 
his mitre, though he has let his " ordination vows " go to 
the bottom — should write a book containing little but 
the matter, and that expressed so much in the manner, of 
men who have hitherto so written for the very purpose 
of vindicating their infidelity ; and who, as long as they 
deemed such arguments true, would have honestly 
deemed it infamy either to become or remain bishops in 
the Christian Church ? I say, reasoning a priori, it is 
utterly incredible. 

2. Is it credible that a man, educated as Bishop 
Colenso was — having had a liberal college training, hav- 



LETTER II. 13 

ing occupied a prominent position at the university, 
having qualified himself to be a clergyman of the Church 
of England, having exercised the functions of one, having 
been appointed a missionary bishop — could have so 
slenderly considered some of the elementary difficulties 
of the Book he had gone 6000 miles to teach the heathen, 
as to surrender his faith ignominiously to the attacks of 
a Zulu savage ? His ignorance, indeed, with such ante- 
cedents, would be astounding enough ; but he tells us 
He was not altogether ignorant — as how could he be, 
unless he had purposely shut his ears to all the din of 
the theological discussions which have been so rife in 
our age ? He tells us that he had, as he imagined, com- 
petently acquainted himself with the solutions which 
had been offered of the difficulties in question, and upon 
the whole, was satisfied ; yet, no sooner does he confront 
his Zulus, whom he is to instruct in the orthodox faith, 
than he is straightway instructed out of it ! His position 
is really as grotesque as that of the soldier who cried to 
his comrades, " I've got a prisoner." " Bring him along 
with you," said they. " He won't come/' said the other. 
"Come without him, then," they rejoined. "But he 
won't let me/' was the answer of this singular captor. 

It does not seem, indeed, very likely that a Zulu, 
who once believed all the gross absurdities of his 
native superstitions, would be very inordinately startled 



14 LETTER II. 

by the difficulties of the Pentateuch ; but be that as it 
may, that Bishop Colenso should be, not only staggered, 
but completely demolished by the native logic, on such 
elementary questions as that about the capacity of Noah's 
ark for its alleged cargo, does seem, to say the least, very 
improbable. 

3. On the supposition that the " ghosts " of some of 
the difficulties he had formerly felt, and which he once 
thought " he had laid/' had begun to haunt him anew, is 
it credible that he should satisfy himself that he might 
close his investigations in one brief tivelvemonth ; especi- 
ally considering, that however ignorant he might be 
when he commenced them, he must have been soon 
aware, when he received the books for which he wrote, 
Ewald, Hengstenberg, Kurtz, etc., that the subjects had 
occupied, and were still occupying, the profoundest and 
acutest inquirers, in lifelong investigations ? Of course, 
I do not mean to say there are not men who are such 
mere bundles of egotism and vanity, as to think they 
have settled in a trice what the deepest and most 
sagacious intellects still think disputable. But is this 
likely to be the case with a man who has the acuteness 
of mind attributed to Bishop Colenso ? Or is it consis- 
tent with the gravity, calmness, and modesty which we 
should expect in a "spiritual guide? Above all, is it 
credible that he should in hot haste publish the crude 



LETTER II. 15 

results of a hurried examination to the world, at the 
very moment he himself avows that he was fully aware 
that his book might and would painfully shock the faith, 
and trouble the heads, hearts, and consciences of thous- 
ands ? I find it hard to believe it. 

4. Is it conceivable that a Christian Bishop should 
indulge in such efflorescence of talk as we find in the 
preface of this work, about the paramount claims of 
truth and the necessity of following it at all hazards, 
and yet fail to give the only convincing proof that all 
this was something more than rhetoric — by resigning his 
bishopric before publishing conclusions so diametrically 
opposed to the " declaration * in the ordination service : 
or that the only practical result of all his flaming pro- 
fessions should be a pettifogging attempt to prove that 
he can, at one and the same time, honourably affirm that 
he does not " unfeignedly believe all the canonical Scrip- 
tures of the Old and New Testaments," and yet does not 
violate his declaration in the ordination service, in which 
he assures us that " he does believe all the canonical Scrip- 
tures of the Old and New Testaments ; " in short, that 
he may keep his doubts, — or rather his certainty of the 
fabulous character of the Pentateuch, — and his bishopric 
at the same time ? Can you believe that a Christian 
Bishop volunteering such ostentatious professions of his 
love of truth, and such heroic defiance of the conse- 



16 LETTER IL 

quences — bent on enlightening the world at whatever 
cost and peril to himself — should thus ignominiously 
subject himself to the suspicion of being the mere slave 
of a shifty and time-serving expediency ? Looking at 
it in a merely intellectual point of view — is it likely a 
man of so clear a head as stands on Bishop Colenso's 
shoulders should have so bewildered his brain as to 
imagine that if he does not believe all the canonical 
Scriptures of the Old and New Testaments, but openly 
rejects at least six of them, he may adhere to the 
" declaration" that he does believe in them ; or that 
any sophistry can prove that, so long as he is a bishop, 
he is not hound by that declaration ? Or can we ima- 
gine him so far to have muddled himself as to believe 
that the conclusion to which he had, it seems, all but 
arrived, — " of the untenableness of his position," — could 
be " materially affected by the recent decision in the 
Court of Arches'?"* Even if that decision were ever 

* Thus the pseudo - Colenso writes : — " For myself, if I 
cannot find the means of doing away with my present difficul- 
ties, I see not how I can retain my Episcopal office, in the 
discharge of which I must require from others a solemn decla- 
ration, that they ' unfeignedly believe all the canonical Scriptures 
of the Old and New Testaments ; ' which, with the evidence now 
before me, it is impossible wholly to believe in." — Page xii. He 
adds in a note, " This was written before the recent decision of 
the Court of Arches, by which, of course, the above conclusion is 
materially affected." 



LETTER II. 17 

intended to cover such wholesale rejections of the canoni- 
cal books as this — which it never was — could he imagine 
that he was at liberty to say, in virtue of that decision, 
that he did believe all the canonical Scriptures of the 
Old and New Testaments, when he did not ; or that he 
might say what his own conscience told him he could 
not, because another man told him he coidd ? Is it con- 
ceivable that he could still further so muddle himself as 
to believe that the decision in question could alleviate 
" scruples on the point of the declaration in the ordina- 
tion service/' while he still expressly admits that " the 
answer in the ordination service is not the only part of 
our formularies that will be generally understood, until 
explained by judicial authority, to involve implicit belief 
in the historical truth of the facts recorded in the Pen- 
tateuch ?" (Page xxiv.) 

And looking at the question morally, — can we believe 
that a Christian Bishop has so muddled his conscience, as 
well as his intellect, as to believe in the above paradoxes, 
or the equal paradox that he is at liberty to remain in 
the Church on conditions, as he himself implies, on 
which no " youth of noble mind, with deep yearnings 
after truth, v can enter it ? Can we believe him satisfied 
with the sophistry, that though such an ingenuous youth, 
if he did not "believe unfeigneclly all the canonical 
Scriptures of the Old and ISTew Testaments," could not 



18 LETTER II. 

make the declaration in the ordination service, yet the 
Bishop of Natal, having happily made it, though he no 
longer believes it, may safely take all the advantages of 
still seeming to believe it % nay, more, not only imply by 
his position that he still believes it, but give effect to that 
belief by ordaining others on the same terms, and by 
taking part himself in all the services and formularies 
of the Church, — solemnly reading " lessons," in the name 
of God, ushered in with, " Thus saith the Lord," though 
he does not believe that the Lord has said anything of 
the kind, and rehearsing in the ears of the people, as 
sacred truths, what, upon his theory, can be nothing 
better than the monstrous exaggerations of Jewish 
vanity gone mad, or the drivel of superstition in its 
dotage ? Is it conceivable that a bishop of the English 
Church should so far resemble Pascal's Jesuit Fathers 
as to think that he may continue to walk in forbidden 
paths with safety, because he knows " how to direct his 
intentions aright/' though novices and neophytes, not 
having the skill to sin without guilt, or walk barefoot 
on knives without cutting their feet, had better not 
enter on such questionable paths at all ? — Yours truly, 

VlNDEX. 



LETTER in. 19 



LETTEK III. 

November 11, 1862. 

My dear Friend — I asked in my previous letter 
whether it was credible that one sincerely in search of 
truth, and, above all, a Christian Bishop, should have 
written a book, in its entire matter, spirit, and tone, so 
suspiciously like some of the worst books of infidelity ; 
— in the resolute suppression of opposing arguments, in 
the exclusive appeal to objections, in palpable distortion 
of facts, in evident reluctance to admit any, even the 
most reasonable, mitigations of a difficulty — in which 
last, as much as in anything, the animus of a writer 
may be seen — in the captious pressing of the literal 
meaning, though it makes not only nonsense of Moses, 
but still greater nonsense of the critic himself; and I 
will add, — though I am ashamed to add, — in the 
attempt, in some places, to give a ludicrous and mock- 
ing air to what the author represents as the fair inter- 
pretation of the narrative. I assure you that, in several 
passages, the manner reminds me much more of Voltaire, 
in his virulent articles on the Old Testament in his 
" Philosophical Dictionary/ than that — I do not say of 
any Christion Bishop, but — of the more decorous advo- 
cates of infidelity. 



20 LETTEE III. 

Now to these charges you will probably say two 
things: first, that the "Preface" seems to contradict 
them ; and, secondly, that I ought to justify my repre- 
sentation by some instances. I will endeavour to satisfy 
you on both points. As to the first : you will say, 
perhaps, "But is there not a noble devotion to truth 
expressed in the preface? Is there not much said 
about reverence in approaching sacred subjects, a fear 
of shaking the faith of others, a solemn sense of respon- 
sibility?" etc. etc. There is; and I answer, it is all 
confined to the preface. When I examine the book 
itself, all trace of these fine things has vanished. The 
professions of devotion to truth in the preface, I admit, 
lack nothing but the corresponding practice ; which, 
depend upon it, would be found, if it were a bishop who 
wrote, first in vacating his bishopric before writing, and 
then writing, if he must write, with " reverence," and 
" caution," and " sense of responsibility," — of all which I 
find not in the book one particle. 

And these things, I say, make it inconceivable 
that the book is the serious, though I admit it may be 
the ironical work of a genuine bishop. But you will 
ask, secondly, for some instances of alleged resemblance 
to the very manner of avowed and consistent infidelity. 
You shall have them in plenty, and the first shall alone 
be an instance of all I have charged, if it be not an ex- 



LETTER III. 21 

ample of the grossest ignorance, — and that cannot excuse 
the tone and manner. It is, in fact, hard to say whether 
the captiousness of this notable passage, its distortion or 
omission of facts, its suppressio veri, or its suggestio falsi 
be most conspicuous. I allude to the critic's grotesque 
description of the duties of the priest in the removal of 
the remains of the slaughtered victims outside the camp. 
Assuming his calculations of the dimensions of the 
camp to be about those of London, our critic says (p. 
40), " In fact we have to imagine the priest having him- 
self to carry on his back on foot, from St. Paul's to the 
outskirts of the metropolis, the skin, and flesh, and 
head, and legs, and inwards, and dung, even the whole 
bullock." It may be said that his ignorance here of the 
force of that form of the Hebrew verb, called Hiphil, or 
his never having taken the pains to see what the Hebrew 
was or meant, has betrayed him into this ridiculous re- 
presentation. But even if we suppose this, can you 
believe that a genuine bishop of the Church would be 
either so grossly ignorant or so grossly negligent in a 
matter of such importance ; and allow himself thus 
unwittingly to play the buffoon, as the author does 
here, by so grossly burlesquing the meaning of Moses ? 
Had he consulted the original, he could hardly fail to 
perceive that the form of the verb in question is appro- 
priate to the act, not of doing, but of causing a thing to 

c 



22 LETTER III. 

be done. But in reality, even the English as it stands 
would not fairly suggest anything like the representa- 
tion of this passage. As long as the usage holds, of 
enjoining on superiors what is to be done by their 
agents, or the maxim, Qui facit per alium facit per se, it 
does not follow that the priest was personally to per- 
form these menial duties. Bishop Colenso himself 
knows far better than to interpret language as our 
pseudo-Colenso interprets it here. The Bishop uses 
human speech like any other "reasonable two-legged 
creature." Thus in his Ten Weeks in Natal, he tells us 
that Dr. Stanger was " one of the two who had brought 
out of that pestilential river (the Niger) the remnant of 
the ill-fated crew of the Albert ;" and he would justly 
stare if any one had told him that he supposed "Dr. S. 
brought them to shore on his back!" Bishop Colenso 
would have said that he meant that Dr. S. took the 
means for bringing them out, by assuming the manage- 
ment of the vessel that did it. 

But the passage swarms with other assumptions, 
which show the animus of the writer. 

The critic knows very well that there was a large 
body of men — the Levites — whose express duty it was 
to assist in the service of the Tabernacle, and to perform 
its menial duties. Even these, however, might not be 
obliged to take the bullock's remains " on their backs ; " 



LETTER IV. 23 

for it is evident that they had carts given them to con- 
vey the tabernacle, and, for aught we know, and as may 
be rationally supposed, other carts for other purposes. 
If they had carts at all, it is not likely that they would 
load their " backs " with the bullocks ; but would prefer 
being " waggoners " to being " porters." But our critic 
who, like Shylock, is determined not to have anything 
but what " is set down in the bond/' may perhaps say — 
as he is saying perpetually in like cases — " But there is 
nothing said about carts." Out of his own mouth he 
may be condemned; for is there anything said about 
" backs V 

In short, it is impossible to account for either the 
ignorance, the levity, or the irreverence displayed in this 
grotesque parody, without supposing that somebody very 
different from a bishop penned it.— Yours truly, 

Yixdex. 



LETTEE IV. 

November 13, 1862. ' 
My dear Friend — I do not think a more remarkable 
instance of resolute captiousness is to be found anywhere 
than in the treatment of the stale and oft-repeated diffi- 
culty as to the rapid increase of the Israelites in Egypt. 



24 LETTER IV. 

" There can be no doubt," remarks Davison in his War- 
"burtonian Lectures, " that the providence of God in. 
various ways favoured the rapid increase of the people 
of Israel during the term of their servitude in Egypt ;" 
and we may safely infer that, if there be any truth in 
the history, they increased at the highest rate at which 
the natural law permits. At this rate or even a little 
short of it, many acute and learned men have affirmed 
that Jacob's family and their wives (perhaps 130 in all) 
might in the time allowed — whichever of the two limits, 
215 or 430 years, be taken — reach the population re- 
corded to have left Egypt at the exodus. "Without 
denying the possibility of this, I content myself with 
asserting the utter absurdity, if we fairly interpret the 
facts of the patriarchal history, of supposing that the 
immediate descendants of Jacob, those who came out of 
Jacob's " loins," with, at most, their wives, formed the 
whole of those who went down with him into Egypt 
This critic says such is the story. " I assume, then," he 
says, " that it is absolutely undeniable that the narrative 
of the exodus distinctly involves the statement, that the 
sixty-six persons 'out of the loins of Jacob,' mentioned in 
Gen. xlvi., and no others, went down with him into Egypt" 
But none of the passages he cites necessarily implies 
this, unless taken with a senseless literality, in which he 
himself does not take it; and it is obviously absurd, 



LETTER IV. 25 

viewed in relation to the whole history. He quotes 
again and again the passage, "Thy fathers went down 
into Egypt with three score and ten persons ; and now 
the Lord thy God hath made thee as the stars of heaven 
for multitude," Deut. x. 22. Yet it is expressly said, 
and this author admits, that their wives also went down,* 
and therefore it is absurd to press the language — as he 
always does however. The above cited passage evidently 
means that whereas Jacob went down with but a very 
few descendants, he had now become a great nation. 
But I contend that all the great facts of the patriarchal 
history shew that those who went down to Egypt were 
in all probability not confined to Jacob's blood relations 
and lineal descendants. 

Probably, I might say certainly, the true way of 
conceiving of the three patriarchs, is to look at them as 
resembling the chiefs of a tribe of Arab nomads, whose 
family and household consist of far more than their im- 
mediate descendants. God had greatly prospered the 

* The animus of the writer is curiously shewn in endeavour- 
ing to prove that the Israelites would have difficulty in inter- 
marrying with the Egyptian women. It is not likely, he says, 
that the king, wishing to keep the Israelites depressed and few, 
would readily allow of such intermarriages ; utterly forgetting, 
or choosing not to remember, that it was only at the close of the 
sojourn in Egypt, that the Egyptian monarch displayed any jeal- 
ousy of the Israelites. 



26 LETTEK IV. 

patriarchs ; they were a sort of princes in the land- 
The chief men of the children of Heth said to Abraham, 
"Thou art a mighty prince among us." We are told 
that Abraham and Lot parted different ways because the 
land was too strait for them ; which would be strange, 
indeed, if their families had consisted only of their im- 
mediate blood-relations, certainly not a score of persons 
in all. We are told, that Abraham had 318 male 
servants capable of bearing arms, and whom he had, by 
the express command of God, taken into the " covenant " 
by the rite of circumcision, and thus naturalized as a 
part of the Hebrew nation. When Jacob returned from 
his long sojourn with Laban, he who had gone out 
solitary, had become, as he says, "two lands;" he had 
not only "oxen, asses, and flocks/' but "men-servants 
and women-servants." Other indications, in many places 
of Scripture, compel us to infer, that the servants of the 
patriarchs were very numerous, as indeed their great 
pastoral wealth assures us they must have been. Again ; 
are we to suppose that Simeon and Levi alone destroyed 
all the inhabitants of Shechem's city by their unaided 
prowess ? Our critic will say, that the book mentions 
no other agent. Tes, just as we find historians telling 
us in a thousand places, that a pirate took this or that 
town, and put the inhabitants to the sword, without 
mentioning any of his agents ; but none but an idiot 



LETTER IV. 27 

would suppose that there vjere none. Again, Jacob, in 
addition to his own property, succeeded to the patrimony 
of Isaac, as Isaac had before inherited the wealth of 
Abraham. We are therefore, I think, constrained to 
believe, that those who went down into Egypt with 
Jacob, who were to take charge of their numerous flocks 
and herds in Goshen — and who, as it appears, were to 
take charge of many of Pharaoh's cattle too — were far 
more than Jacob's own issue, and probably, instead of 
amounting only to seventy, amounted to many hundreds. 
The assignment of a whole province to them (that of 
Goshen), seems to favour the same idea. For if they 
had been only seventy, a few moderate-sized farms, one 
would think, would have been amply sufficient for 
them. 

The answer of Kurtz and others, therefore, who say 
that those who went down to Egypt must have been 
very numerous, is most reasonable. I have no hesita- 
tion in saying, that if I ever so much believed in the 
pseudo-Colenso's general conclusion as to the unhistoric 
character of the Pentateuch, I should be obliged to ad- 
mit that every main fact in connection with the patri- 
archal history points to the reasonableness of Kurtz's 
conclusion, and that nothing but a determination to 
make or magnify difficulties, can have blinded this 
writer to it. In his reply to Kurtz, he observes that 



28 LETTEK IV. 

twelve sacks of corn could go but a little way to sustain 
such a household for a twelvemonth. I reply, first, 
that it could go but a little way in supporting 70, or 
rather, including women, 130 ; and secondly, that to 
suppose it was intended to do so, is just one of those 
conjectures our critic always disallows, when it is used 
to mitigate an objection, but indulges in ad libitum 
when he wants to magnify one. We have no proof 
that the patriarchs had no more than twelve sacks, 
or that if they had not, they sought more than sufficient 
for sparing use in Jacob's own household, in the strict 
sense. It is not uncommon, even in these days, for 
people to live on wheaten bread, though their inferiors 
and dependants seldom see it. That the famine, up to 
the time of the departure into Egypt, was of bread, and 
not of food in general, is proved by the fact, that the 
herds and cattle remained. 

I do not say that we can tell how the matter was, 
nor is it necessary that we should. I merely mean to 
say, that the pseudo-Colenso's difficulty is entirely of 
his own making ; and that, meantime, the main facts 
which bear on the subject, and all the probabilities of 
the case, are in favour of Kurtz's conclusion. — Tours 
truly, Vindex. 



LETTER V. 29 



LETTEE V. 

November 15, 1862. 
My dear Friend — -There is one circumstance, 
which, if I might trust to internal evidence only, would 
alone be to me a demonstration that this book could not 
be the work of a Christian at all, much less of a Chris- 
tian Bishop. Is it conceivable that any honest inquirer, 
solely anxious to ascertain whether the history of the 
Pentateuch was true or not, would have confined him- 
self exclusively to objections ; or imagined that, without 
computing the positive evidence on the other side, it was 
possible to decide the point ? Everybody knows that 
there is no history in the world that may not be proved 
v/nhistoricy if only discrepancies, seeming contradictions, 
difficulties, and objections, — and in every history some 
will be found that are insurmountable, — be exclusively 
dwelt upon. There is no history whatever, whether of 
ancient or of modern times, against which unanswerable 
topics of this description cannot be urged. In all such 
cases, the merest tyro knows that the questions involved, 
depending as they do on moral evidence, can be decided 
only by asking, On which side is the preponderance of 
argument? Which way does the balance of evidence 
obviously incline? These are the questions always 



30 LETTER V. 

asked by common sense and common candour in every 
such case. Now, the remarkable feature of the present 
work is, that there might not be, for aught it tells us, 
one single thing to be said for the universal belief of so 
many nations, during so many ages, in the historical 
truth of the Pentateuch! Is it conceivable that the 
obvious and reasonable course mentioned above could 
have been missed by any fair advocate ; by any one 
who was not resolved on proving a foregone conclusion, 
and supporting it by every species of logical chicanery ? 
In no other way can I account for this purely ex 'parte 
statement. Is it likely that such ex parte statement, 
and on that side, should have come from a Christian 
Bishop ? How is it, if he be really intent on truth, that 
he does not even advert to one of the many difficulties 
which, supposing the Pentateuch not historic, are far 
harder of solution than any of those by which he would 
prove it fabulous? — yes, far harder than any of the 
numerical problems he propounds, if we take into 
account, first, our possible ignorance in many cases of 
the numbers originally in the text ; and secondly, do not 
leave out of account the writer's own utterly absurd 
exaggerations and distortions; if, again, we take into 
account our ignorance of many circumstances omitted 
by Moses, and do not leave out of account many other 
circumstances which this writer has most gratuitously 



LETTEK V. 31 

assumed. I repeat, the problems we are called to solve, 
on the theory of the urihistoric character of the Penta- 
teuch, are far more difficult than any of those which, by 
packing his evidence and begging his premises, this 
writer urges against it. Let me briefly point out two or 
three only, — all of which must be confronted as a neces- 
sary condition of coming to a true decision. How, then, 
shall we account for the intense, obstinate, and unani- 
mous belief of the Jews for so many ages, and after- 
wards of their enemies, the Samaritans, in the historic 
character, nay, in the Mosaic authorship and inspiration 
of the Pentateuch? — a belief never troubled by a shadow 
of doubt or suspicion, or contradicted by one echo of 
opposing testimony ; a belief which, as we shall see by 
and by, they were ever palpably interested in throwing 
off, if erroneous, and yet which they would sooner die 
than surrender? This fact is in itself equally incompre- 
hensible — if the Pentateuch be indeed unhistoric — at 
whatever date we fix its composition ; whether we regard 
the document as preceding or contemporaneous with 
their national life and institutions, or (as some wise 
critics, but all of yesterday, pretend) composed very late 
in their history, or even after the return from the Baby- 
lonish captivity. If the former be supposed, and these 
monstrous fables were from the beginning foisted on the 
nation as the true history of the events in which it 



32 LETTER Y. 

originated — Liber, qui veluti curabula Juris continet — 
how can we account for its unanimously accepting them, 
and proceeding to mould the national life, laws, and 
manners upon them ? Above all, how shall we account 
for this people's affirming, in this case, that they had 
seen marvels which everybody was appealed to as having 
seen, but which they knew had never been wrought ; 
and on that egregious faith — or rather lie — proceeding 
to bend their necks to a burdensome yoke of laws and 
ceremonies, which, in the language of Peter, " neither 
they nor their fathers had been able to bear ; J; and then 
(to complete the thing) handing down through all com- 
ing ages, without one misgiving of heart, one faltering of 
doubt, one protesting whisper of conscience, this unani- 
mous and stupendous lie ? At the very least, how can 
we imagine the nation moulding its life, forming its in- 
stitutions and manners, on what that whole nation knew, 
by the very appeal to it, to be a pure romance ? 

It is these very difficulties that principally inclined 
our modern sceptics — who were at all events resolved to 
get rid of the miraculous elements — to contend for the 
late composition of the Pentateuch. But if that theory 
be adopted, we are soon led to some similar difficulties, 
and equally insurmountable. For if this book was 
really a late composition — long after the nation had a 
history of its own, and had got (no one can tell how) its 



LETTER V. 33 

institutions and its laws — how came the Jews unani- 
mously to endorse books in which that history is 
throughout so egregiously caricatured ; in which common 
facts are everywhere exaggerated into the most mon- 
strous fables? Five thousand at the Exodus, as this 
critic supposes, are turned into six hundred thousand, 
and everything else in similar proportion ; that is, five 
parts out of about 600 may be supposed true ! Above 
all, how came the Jews, at that time of day, to vouch 
for supernatural fictions of the most monstrous character 
so freely superfused over the whole Mosaic books? 
How came they, at so late a period of their annals, 
to accept without a dissentient voice this document as 
their true history ? how came they to be universally 
hoodwinked, so as not to perceive the juggle that was 
being passed upon them ; or so universally wicked as 
to join, without a murmur that has ever reached their 
posterity, in adopting, consecrating, and handing down the 
cheat? not one of them even for a moment relenting, in a 
momentary treason to this conspiracy of wickedness, so 
far as to express doubt or detestation of this prodigious 
and unanimous lie? How could they do it if they 
would, or how would they do it if they could ? — I say 
lie — for however this writer and many modern infidels 
may politely endeavour to shew they by no means 
charge deliberate fraud on the compilers of the Penta- 



34 LETTER V. 

teuch, it is utterly impossible, if the main facts of the 
Pentateuch have as little truth in them as this author 
supposes — and the miracles, a fortiori, no truth at all — 
to free either the writers of these documents, or the 
nation who accepted and vouched for them, from the most 
deliberate and enormous falsehood. But, lying or no 
lying, the thing itself is infinitely more incredible than 
that Englishmen should accept and unanimously hand 
down to posterity without a trace of disagreement, 
Ivanhoe and Kenilworth, as true episodes in our own 
history, and, what is more, get all after ages to believe 
them to be so ! This would be a bagatelle compared with 
the supposition of the whole Jewish nation, and even 
their bitter enemies the Samaritans, receiving, as no less 
than inspired truth, these impudent contradictions of 
their true history, and, when first published, of their 
very senses and consciousness, to boot ! Again, how came 
this singular people to receive, not only as historically 
true, but as worthy of suffering martyrdom for, if called 
to it, records which, if not history, are but one long libel 
upon themselves ? Would this make them more willing 
to toil in procuring credit for that enduring and unani- 
mous lie, by which alone these records could be effectu- 
ally consigned to the veneration of posterity ? Would 
not all patriotism, as well as everything else, lead them 
to denounce chronicles which are little else than chroni- 



LETTEE V. 35' 

cles of their shame ? As well may we suppose English- 
men enamoured of the worst libels of the present New 
York press ; adopting them as faithful, nay inspired, 
portraits of our national character ; and handing them 
down to posterity as worthy of the profoundest venera- 
tion! It may be said, perhaps, that the assumed 
privilege of being " the favourites of heaven," no matter 
how they used or abused it, might reconcile the Jews to 
being thus pilloried to all ages. I answer, first, that it 
is sadly evident that it was a privilege, which through- 
out their history the Jews were only too willing to for- 
feit ; and, secondly, that though it might tickle national 
vanity to represent themselves as under God's immediate 
guidance, the pleasure would be more than balanced by 
the necessity of also saying that they ever spurned at 
that guidancy, and repaid the Divine beneficence with 
the most flagitious ingratitude and wickedness. Such 
traits — had these records been either fraudulent or ficti- 
tious, or anything but truth — it is certain that patriotism 
would have softened or obliterated, before the nation 
would have received them. It might, perhaps, humour 
a man's vanity to tell how his father and grandfather 
had been prime ministers to some great monarch ; but if 
he had to say at the same time that the one had em- 
bezzled the public property, and the other had been 
hanged for treason, he would be apt, I fancy, to main- 



36 LETTEE V. 

tain a wise silence about his pedigree. But again : how 
shall we account upon such an hypothesis as that of this 
pseudo-Colenso, for the inimitable marks of sincerity, 
truth, nature, artlessness, honesty, which everywhere 
abound in the Pentateuch, and which have, in all ages, 
made not only Jews, but Christians, believe it to be his- 
tory, and neither fiction nor forgery? How shall we 
account for those " undesigned coincidences " — many of 
them as striking as those which Paley has so ingeniously 
insisted on in his Horce Paulince — of which Blunt has 
given us but a small spicilegium in his little work on 
this subject ? How, above all, shall we account for the 
profound religious tone, the elevated morality, in these 
documents — wlxich, if not history, are a contexture of 
the grossest and most impudent inventions ? How came 
the sublime doctrines of monotheism, and a purer and 
loftier moral code than the world had ever seen, to be 
given to the world in records, every page of which is 
stamped, if this theory be true, with the most enormous 
misrepresentations and the most extravagant violations 
of truth ? How shall we account for the union of so 
much moral elevation and such unique hypocrisy ; such 
pervading sense of the Divine presence, and protestations 
of speaking by God's authority, with such abandoned 
wickedness ? For, I repeat, there is no medium, in the 
nature of the thing, between supposing the documents 



LETTER VI. 37 

historically true, and allowing that those who palmed 
them upon the world as such, and those who connived 
at and perpetuated the cheat, were among, not only the 
most stupendously gifted, but the most deliberately 
wicked of mankind. 

These 1 say, are a few — and but a few — of the ques- 
tions of external and internal evidence, which any one, 
really anxious to institute an inquiry into the historic 
truth of the pentateuch, would have been certain to ask ; 
he would then carefully compare the result with the 
objections ; that is, he would, like any one else engaged 
in such inquiries, have given the positive as well as 
negative side. He would have done so on the mere sup- 
position that he was impartially investigating history ; 
he could not hut have done it, had he had any reverence 
for the Pentateuch as containing, in any sense, a revela- 
tion from God. I conclude, therefore, that the writer of 
this book is probably a very different person from its 
reputed author. — Yours truly, Vindex. 



LETTEE VI. 

November 18, 1862. 

My Dear Friend — Pray do not ask me to write 
more than my object requires. That object is not for- 

D 



38 LETTER VI. 

mally to refute the book, which, as a most grotesque 
caricature of all the conditions of fair historic investiga- 
tion, sufficiently refutes itself. My aim is to shew you 
how much more easy I find it to believe in the historic 
credibility of the Pentateuch, or even that Moses was its 
author, than that a Bishop, still remaining such, should 
write a work which speaks of six of his " Canonical 
Books " much as Bolingbroke spoke of them a century 
ago, and pleads for much the same system of Deism as 
that of Tindal ; or that he should borrow, with creeping 
servility, every contemptible quibble from ancient and 
modern scepticism against the said "Canonical Books," 
and forget to borrow a single argument for them ! In 
shewing this, I do indeed, as I imagine, also refute the 
principal arguments of the book itself, if indeed it be 
not an insult to logic to apply the term " arguments "to 
such quibbles as, for the most part, compose it. 

And the more I look at the thing, the more incom- 
prehensible the Colensian authorship appears. Take, 
for example, the account of the " Passover/' In order to 
prove that the events of the Exodus are impossible, the 
writer represents the narrative as asserting that the 
command to celebrate the Passover, its celebration, the 
summons to depart from Egypt, and the actual departure, 
all took place on the same night ; and then argues that 
it was utterly impossible that the people could be- ap- 



LETTER VI. 39 

prised of these things, organize the movements necessary 
to carry them out, and actually carry them out, in so 
brief a space of time, — about twelve hours in all ! But 
how is it that he forgets, or rather mentions only to cut 
it out of the text altogether, the detailed statement in 
Ex. xii. 1-11, that Moses had full instructions given to 
him, and the people through him, nearly a fortnight 
before ? that they were told that on the tenth of the 
month they were to select a lamb, and "to keep it up" 
till the fourteenth of the month ? — why is the detailed 
account to go for nothing ? Just because the writer 
says, " there seems some contrariety in the story, from 
the words used in chap. xii. 12, ' For I will pass through 
the land of Egypt this night! This/' he says, "makes 
the story perplexing and contradictory '" and so he 
summarily rejects the fuller and explicit narrative, that 
he may make it really " perplexing and contradictory." 
There is, in truth, no contrariety at all ; for " this 
night 5 ' evidently refers, as any ordinary reader would 
see, to the night of which the preceding narrative of the 
coming passover is speaking, not of the night of the 
passover itself. All the verbs, both before and after, 
are in the future tense, not the present. And if he will 
be so senselessly literal as to insist that " this night" 
must be spoken of absolutely present time, it can no more 
mean, as he says, the next coming night, than it can 



40 LETTER VI. 

mean a night of next week ; and still less can * this 
night" of the 12th verse, if spoken of such present time, 
be used interchangeably (as it is) with " this day" of 
the 14th verse ; unless our author is pleased — which 
he often is — to turn light into darkness ! But now, even 
if there were some slight difficulty in the interpretation 
of a single particle ; which would be most natural to 
any honest critic ? — to suppose that there might be some 
error in his interpretation, or even some error in the 
transcription, of the said particle (and no one pretends 
that there have been no errors in the text), or to take his 
knife and cut out a whole paragraph of the original 
document for the very purpose of giving some semblance 
of plausibility to his objections ? Why should he give 
exclusive weight to one side, though but a doubtful con- 
struction of a single word told for it, and ignore a whole 
paragraph which, in the most express terms, told against 
it ? There is but one answer that I can give, and that 
is, that the writer was determined beforehand that the 
"Exodus" should not be historic; and therefore did as 
he is continually doing, — chose to reject the stronger 
evidence, and to take up with any quibble in preference 
to it : and so he sticks by his — particle ! I confess I am 
utterly astonished at the effrontery of this criticism, and 
feel that it is absolutely indecent to suppose that a 
bishop could act thus for any purpose, but least of all 



LETTER VI. 41 

for the purpose of proving, per fas et nefas, or rather per 
nefas only, those canonical books which his vows still 
bind him unfeignedly to believe, a tissue of incredible 
fictions ! I could as soon believe that one of the right 
reverend bench had been indicted for " cutting and 
maiming," as that he would thus " cut and maim " an 
ancient document in so shameless a way, and for so 
shameless a purpose. 

We have a similar instance of effrontery — or, if not, 
of such incredible carelessness, as to make all argu- 
ments of such a writer, about the accuracy of any docu- 
ment, altogether laughable — in his very first quotation ; 
I mean that from which he would fain prove that the 
sons of Pharez (Hezron and Hamul) are plainly said to 
have been born in Canaan, whereas, according to our 
critic, they must have been born in Egypt. Taking his 
interpretation of the narrative for granted, he infers 
that the chronology utterly forbids the supposition, in- 
asmuch as, if Judah was only forty-two when he went 
into Egypt, it is incredible that Pharez should have 
been old enough to have these sons. Into the difficulty 
in question, on the theory that Hezron and Hamul 
were born in Canaan, I do not enter. The question is 
sub judice, and awaits, like many other minute difficul- 
ties, further investigation. Some say that we do not 
know sufficient of the chronology to determine Judah's 



42 LETTER VI. 

age at the epoch in question ; others, that Hezron and 
Hamul, being considered the substitutes of Judah's dead 
sons (Er and Onan), though born in Egypt, are given as 
their representatives. Into all this, I say, I do not enter; 
a fair critic, really intent on truth, would say, " Let us 
further investigate the question, but let us not prejudge 
it." But observe : — 

This critic not only assumes, as usual, that his view 
of the question is absolutely certain, and, as usual, 
against the history, but, that this may be made more 
apparent, he misquotes the passage. As it really stands, 
the words in question have all the appearance of being 
a parenthetical clause, intended to supplement the in- 
formation respecting the family of Judah. So regarded, 
it by no means follows that the sacred writer intended 
to incorporate Hezron and Hamul with those who went 
down into Egypt with Jacob at all ; and this critic, in 
citing it, or rather mis-citing it, has altered the construc- 
tion by leaving out a verb, and thus assimilated the 
expression to that one formula, which is applied through- 
out the chapter to the sons of Jacob and their descen- 
dants, who are expressly said to have gone with him 
into Egypt. The language of the authorized version 
(closely following the Hebrew) is — "And the sons of 
Levi ; Gershon, Kohath, and Merari. And the sons of 
Judah ; Er, and Onan, and Shelah, and Pharez, and 



LETTER VI. 43 

Zarah : but Er and Onan died in the land of Canaan. 
And the sons of Pharez were Hezron and Hamul. And 
the sons of Issachar ; Tola, and Phuvah, and Job, and 
Shimron. And the sons of Zebulun ; Sered, and Elon, 
and JahleeF (Gen. xlvi. 11-14). Now you will observe 
that " the sons of Pharez were/' is a different formula 
from that employed in all the other enumerations. Our 
critic, however, for reasons best known to himself, omits 
all that could make it appear a parenthetical clause, and 
quotes thus, p. 17 — "And the sons of Judah, Er and 
Onan, and Shelah, and Pharez, and Zarah ; but Er and 
Onan died in the land of Canaan : and the sons of 
Pharez, Hezron and Hamul ;" and then says, " It appears 
to me to be certain that the writer here means to say, 
that Hezron and Hamul were horn in the land of 
Canaan;" that is, after having himself destroyed all 
appearance of its being possible to mean something dif- 
ferent!*" 

I hesitate to call this a deliberate falsification of the 
document, but I know not how otherwise to account for 

* The hypercriticisni of the writer is still farther shewn by 
his adding, that Hezron and Hamul were clearly designed to be 
reckoned " among the seventy persons (including Jacob himself 
and Joseph and his tivo sons) who came into Egypt with Jacob." 
Yet he knows perfectly well that the historian never disguises 
the fact, that he did not mean to say that Joseph and his two 
sons came down with Jacob, or that the two last were born in 



44 LETTEE VI. 

it. The writer could not have taken it from the He- 
brew, for the verb he has omitted stares him in the face : 
he could not have copied it from the authorized version ; 
for not only must there have been the change of the 
construction and omission of the verb, but a total change 
of punctuation. 

If it be a deliberate falsification, I ask you whether 
it is credible that Dr. Colenso could be guilty of it ? Is 
it not much as if one were asked to believe that the 
Archbishop of Canterbury had been taken up on a 
charge of petty larceny ? And if the thing be accounted 
for by supposing such a resolute animus against the 
Pentateuch that the critic could not even see the words 
before him, and that his obliquity of mind extended even 
to his vision, is this bitter partiality on that side likely 
to be the fault of a Christian Bishop, who would natu- 
rally see as few difficulties as he could in his " canonical 
books," — to a belief in which, while a bishop, he still 
pledges himself ? 

Or, to take it on the most charitable ground, and 
impute it to mere blundering, can you easily suppose 
that a man of Dr. Colenso's known accuracy in his own 

Canaan at all ! Why, with this open declaration on the histo- 
rian's part that he is not to be interpreted with this absurd 
literality, does onr critic pretend that it is certain that Hezron 
and Hamul are designed to be represented as born in Canaan ? 



LETTER VII. 45 

province — that of the mathematics — and writing on so 
grave and perilous an argument, would thus egregiously 
blunder in his very first quotation from a book, the 
monstrous blunders of which he is about to prove? 
Certainly any man may easily prove them, if he first 
makes them; and this part of the Pentateuch at all 
events, as it stands in the new version of the pseudo- 
Colenso, is inaccurate enough ! 

In my next, I will consider his notable hypothesis of 
the current views of inspiration. — I am, yours ever, 

Vindex. 

LETTEE VII. 

November 21, 1862. 

My Dear Friend — I cannot think it at all likely 
that a bishop, in these days especially, would jumble 
together in hopeless confusion, as this critic does, the 
questions of the inspiration, and the historic credibility, 
of a book ; and still less, that he would strain to the 
very uttermost the imputed popular views on the former 
subject, for the very purpose of proving that a book is 
not only not inspired, but is no history at all. This he 
does by assuming that he may, for the purpose of his 
argument (but in opposition, as I maintain, to the gene- 
ral belief of the Christians of our day), take for granted 



46 LETTER VII. 

the indisputable integrity of the text, as we now have it, 
its integrity even as regards numerals ; and so bar all 
possibility of mitigating any of those difficulties which 
it is his delight to magnify and multiply to the utter- 
most, by supposing, in some cases, minute errors there. 

In so doing he does gross injustice to the argument ; 
and, no less, to the views of almost every one of us who 
maintain the historic character of the Pentateuch. 

I say I can hardly imagine a Christian Bishop, at 
least in our day, acting thus for the very purpose of 
aggravating difficulties. I can easily imagine many a 
Christian Bishop drawing very carefully the line of dis- 
tinction between the questions of plenary inspiration 
and historic credibility ; and shewing that, in Tacitus or 
Gibbon, for example, every part might be true, though 
not one word was inspired; that even the admission of 
some amount of error in the author himself, would not 
destroy or substantially diminish the historic validity of 
his work ; and that where the errors (for errors of that 
kind there must always be) originate in the accidents of 
time and the conditions of transmission, they would not 
appreciably affect the historic credibility of the work at 
all. I say I can imagine many a Christian bishop care- 
fully defining his terms and cautiously weighing his pro- 
positions on all these subjects, and his care and caution 
would be well bestowed. 



LETTER VII. 47 

But I can hardly imagine a bishop first ignorant] y 
jumbling all these subjects together, and then exagger- 
ating the popular views of inspiration, for the very pur- 
pose, apparently, of inferring that no difficulty whatever 
can be supposed soluble by referring it to an error in 
the text ; and that in urging any objection against the 
historic credibility, he may always rely practically on 
the indefectibility of the text as we have it. 

I repeat, that the critic in all this does gross injustice 
to the Pentateuch, and not less to the views generally 
entertained on the subject of its historic credibility by 
Christians in general — not one in a million of whom 
would deny that, whatever the original inspiration, or 
infallibility, or historic credibility of the book, there are 
and must be many minor errors in the text as we now 
have it, and that, therefore, to urge objections, as if there 
were no such errors, against the historic character of the 
Pentateuch, is to argue most fallaciously. 

I say he does injustice to the views entertained by 
Christians generally, and I say so for this reason : that 
I do not know the man,— and I confidently challenge 
him to find one in a million, — who would be prepared 
to deny either of the two following propositions : — 1. 
That without supernatural aid, — the special miraculous 
intervention of God, — exerted through all ages on the 
successive copyists of the Pentateuch, many minute 



48 LETTER VII. 

errors, by the very laws of transmission, must have crept 
in. 2. That there is not the slightest reason to believe 
(but demonstration to the contrary) that God has wrought 
these numberless miracles on the heads and fingers of 
successive transcribers in all ages, to prevent such errors 
from creeping in. I venture to say that I have allowed 
him a liberal proportion in conjecturing that he might 
possibly find one in a million who would deny either of 
these propositions ; and yet, unless a man does so, he 
admits that not only may there be, but there must be, many 
minute errors in the text of the Pentateuch as we have it, 
and, consequently, objections which no more affect its his- 
toric credibility than similar errors affect that of any 
other history. I rather think that not even that solitary 
witness to the alleged popular conceptions of the absolute 
accuracy of every syllable in the Bible on whose testi- 
mony this critic lays such stress, would deny the above 
propositions ; for it is doubtless not of the Bible as we 
have it that he means that he can assert this absolute 
accuracy, but as he conceives its text originally stood. 
If any one be prepared to plead for this indefectible text 
of either Testament as we have it, when we know that 
there are some thousands of various readings in the 
Old, and as many thousands in the New, I do not know 
him, and never yet heard of him. 

If, therefore, almost every Christian is prepared to 



LETTER VII. 49 

admit that there are, and must be, many minute errors, 
because variations, in the text, but without dreaming 
that the historic character of the Book (or even its ori- 
ginal inspiration) is any more thereby affected than the 
credibility of other histories would be affected by any 
similar errors, this writer is throughout caricaturing the 
ordinary view. Christians in general openly contend, 
that the class of imputed errors which he loves to pet, 
may be often suspected to be in the text ; that is, errors 
in the numerals : from the ease with which such errors 
find their way into all documents ; and more particu- 
larly into Hebrew, owing to the facility with which 
several letters, from their close resemblance, may be 
mistaken for one another. And if, in remote times, not 
only words expressed the numerals (as in the present 
text), but the letters themselves (being numerals) were 
used for the notation, many errors — without perpetual 
miracle — would be inevitable. Nor is it of little mo- 
ment to remark, that in this class of errors, though the 
corruption of the text may be very minute, the differ- 
ence of meaning may be by no means minute The 
substitution of one word for another — of one letter for 
another — of one accent for another — may make a great 
difference in a question of numbers. It is true, that the 
errors in general would be still minute in another sense ; 
for happily they are rarely of any consequence. 



50 LETTER VII. 

It may at first sight seem to a sciolist that if there 
be errors — no matter what the cause — the argument for 
the truth, the historic truth of the Pentateuch, is equally 
affected. Not at all ; and for these plain reasons : — 

1. That one who always reasons on the assumed origi- 
nal accuracy of the text, measures the historic validity of 
the work by what may be but the error of copyists and 
printers ; while those who contend for that historic vali- 
dity, unclogged by such conditions, can consistently 
assert that, in spite of a certain amount of such error, 
the historic value of the work is not appreciably dimi- 
nished at all, far less that every such error can be pleaded 
against its historic credibility. 

2. Everything in the question of the historical value 
of a work depends on the sources and the limits of its 
imputed errors ; and the one will also determine the 
other. If the errors be the result of time and transcrip- 
tion, we know by the whole history of literature that 
they will exist indeed, but fall within very narrow 
limits ; and in no serious degree impair our fullest con- 
fidence in the integrity and substantial identity of an 
ancient writing. A great panic was once felt about the 
direful consequences of admitting thousands of various 
readings in the Greek Testament, and of attempting a 
revision of the text founded on more accurate collation ; 
but it is now seen very clearly by everbody, that all these 



LETTER VII. 51 

readings put together do not, as Griesbach truly says, 
affect the essential integrity of the text, any more than 
similar errors affect the text of Plato or Cicero. And 
the same principles we apply to every other ancient 
work. But if we take for granted that all these errors, 
still more if they be grave errors, are the result of the 
ignorance, conceit, exaggeration, or fraud of the original 
writer, it destroys all confidence in him, even where we 
cannot trace error. JSTow this critic's eminent want of 
candour consists in practically arguing as if this admis- 
sion of inevitable errors, founded on the errors of tran- 
scription, and, above all, in relation to the numerals, 
cannot be applied to the investigation of difficulties. 
He says it cannot be applied to all cases, and this every- 
body will concede ; his injustice consists in taking for 
granted that it can be applied to none ; in always 
assuming that, in the cases he takes, he may treat the 
numbers in the text as those which, without a doubt, 
originally stood there ; and that they therefore imply 
the original untrustworthiness of the history. 

Some cases there are, in which it is impossible not 
to suspect error in the numbers, arising from the causes 
above assigned ; but they will no more prove the un- 
historic character of the Pentateuch in the estimate of 
any fair reason er, than similar difficulties will infer the 
fictitious character of Thucydides or Tacitus. Some of 



52 LETTER VII. 

the difficulties connected with numbers, however, are 
happily neither errors of transcription nor of the ori- 
ginal writer, but simply made by this critic himself — as 
when he says, for example, that the Pentateuch abso- 
lutely declares that all who came out of Egypt were 
exclusively the descendants of the seventy persons who 
went down with Jacob ; and so in some other instances, 
which I will point out in a future letter. 

This disposition to take for granted the infallibility 
of his own data — this habitual determination to see no 
doubts in any of his premises, where so many other 
men have seen them, argues, indeed, the utter want of 
critical impartiality ; but the direction of that no-doubt 
— its ever pointing one way, that is, to conclusions 
against the credibility of the " canonical books," never 
by any accident for it — is hardly less than proof positive 
to me, that the writer, if he seriously means what he 
says, is no more a genuine Christian Bishop than Tom 
Paine was. 

While the admission of possible minute errors in the 
text (as in a numeral, for example) serves completely to 
neutralize many of the misrepresentations and exaggera- 
tions which our critic founds on the supposition that the 
text is always indefectible, and is a sufficient answer, 
therefore, to many of his arguments ; of course, neither 
that nor anything else can avail, if the hundredth part 



LETTER VII. 53 

of the errors he finds, or rather makes, were really the 
errors of the original writers : the residuum of truth that 
remains becomes infinitesimal. All the supernatural 
and miraculous narrative must, of course, be at once sur- 
rendered ; for though this author is pleased to allow 
that he finds, in the abstract, no difficulty in receiving 
miracles, supposing the testimony which vouches for 
them historically credible, — can anybody suppose the 
testimony in this case to be worth a button, when it is 
everywhere represented as affirming, as facts, things about 
as true as the " Arabian Nights V } Who can trust those 
who report miraculous accounts, when we find them thus 
travestying the commonest facts of ordinary life ? It is 
as though we were asked to accept a bill for £10,000 for 
one whom we could not trust with five farthings ! Cer- 
tain it is, that if any history of Greece or Eome, France 
or England, were chargeable with anything like the 
errors which this critic imputes to the Pentateuch, the 
whole would fall at once into the region of fable. As 
to supposing it of any value, — as this critic still pre- 
tends, — as a revelation of the highest conceptions of 
morality and religion, one would as soon think of going 
to the fables of Pilpay. If we are to go anywhere for 
them, let us not go to a book which solemnly declares, 
in every form of adjuration and appeal to Deity, that its 
facts are true, while nearly all are false. And, indeed, 

E 



54 LETTER VIE. 

why should we go anywhere ? Is not every man, accord- 
ing to this writer, his own oracle ? What need can we 
have of a Bible, or even of his admired " Eam ?" — Yours 
truly, Vindex. 



LETTEE VIII. 

November 29, 1862, 
My dear Friend — The whole force of one large class 
of "incredibilities " in the Pentateuch which this critic 
has discovered, depends on the following postulates, 
every one of which is expressly contradicted in the his- 
tory. Their futility, indeed, it hardly needed history to 
prove, since the nature of the case, and all human ex- 
perience in every analogous case, would be sufficient to 
explode them. They are these : — 

1. That the Levitical legislation was intended to ap- 
ply in every part, to the life in the wilderness, — which 
it plainly was not Nay, it is clear that much that pos- 
sibly might have been complied with was, as a matter 
of fact, clearly dispensed with. 

2. That even when it was impossible to comply with 
the law, that impossibility (which has always hitherto 
been supposed to operate as a complete release from 
obligation to any law, human or divine, and by the 



LETTER VIII. 55 

maxims of all lawgivers from Solon to Justinian), is still 
somehow not to be supposed to operate as a release, in 
the case of the unfortunate Israelites. 

3. That all the Jews, without exception, would obey 
the law, when it was possible to obey it — though where 
any one could get such a notion of the Jews from their 
history it is hard to say; but certainly not from the 
Pentateuch ! Indeed, it would be a little de trop to 
expect it of any people. 

Can you now imagine a Bishop eagerly burdening 
his " canonical books " with such gratuitous difficulties 
as these ? Yet so it is with the pseudo-Colenso ; and a 
great many of his prime difficulties vanish at once, when 
we deny these postulates. 

As to the first : we plainly see that not only was not 
the rigid observance of every punctilio of the Jewish 
law imperative in the wilderness, but that one of the 
most essential rites — that which was, in fact, the sign 
and seal of the covenant (though, for aught we can see, 
far more easy of observance under such circumstances 
than many other rites), was neglected altogether. I 
refer, of course, to the rite of " circumcision," the prac- 
tice of which, as we see by the book of Joshua, had been 
suspended. 

It is also generally allowed that the Passover was 
intermitted ; but, as it was probably from impossibility 



56 LETTER VIII. 

of keeping it, the matter will be better considered in 
connection with the second of the above postulates. 

The testimony given in Deuteronomy to a general 
laxity in many parts of the ritual, during the sojourn in 
the wilderness, confirms this representation, and gives 
the natural explanation. Let us hear it in full, for 
the very language is a sufficient answer to many of 
this writer's sophisms : — " Ye shall not do after all the 
things that we do here this day, every man whatsoever 
is right in his ow T n eyes. For ye are not as yet come to 
the rest and to the inheritance which the Lord your God 
giveth you. But when ye go over Jordan, and dwell in 
the land which the Lord your God giveth you to inherit, 
and when he giveth you rest from all your enemies 
round about, so that ye dwell in safety ; then there shall 
be a place which the Lord your God shall choose to 
cause his name to dwell there : thither shall ye bring all 
that I command you ; your burnt-offerings, and your 
sacrifices, your tithes, and the heave-offering of your 
hand, and all your choice vows which ye vow unto the 
Lord. And ye shall rejoice before the Lord your God, 
ye, and your sons, and your daughters, and your men- 
servants, and your maid-servants, and the Levite that is 
within your gates ; forasmuch as he hath no part nor 
inheritance with you" — (Deut. xii. 8-12). 

Further, we are expressly told that many enactments 



LETTER VIII. 57 

of the law, as we see also by the nature of the thing, 
were prospective, and could only refer — as they are 
often plainly said to do — to the life of the people in the 
settled abodes of Canaan. The formula, too, This or that 
shall ye " do when ye come into the land," is of frequent 
occurrence. 

Again : even if there were no such intimations in 
the history, common-sense would conclude it must be so 
from the nature of the case ; partly, because the system 
itself was gradually propounded, and must have required 
time to inure the people to it, — for no system can be 
fully administered while it is projecting, just as no 
house can be inhabited while it is building ; partly, be- 
cause its very promulgation was an affair of years ; and 
partly, again, because by the very supposition, the 
system was given while the nation was in the act of 
migration — en route. Many portions were intended, no 
doubt, for present though partial observance, and so far 
as circumstances would admit ; but any signal difficulty 
of conforming to the ritual, — as in the case of circum- 
cision, — seems to have given indemnity for omission, as 
we might be sure that it would with any reasonable law- 
giver. 

But now for the second postulate. Our critic cries : 
" Many of the laws were in the wilderness impossible to 
be obeyed." Very well ; that is the easiest case of all : 



58 LETTER VIII. 

then they would not be obeyed, and nobody would be to 
blame for it. Necessity not only dispenses with cere- 
mony, or any number of ceremonies, but with the Deca- 
logue itself. 

Xo law is more binding than that of " loving our 
neighbour as ourselves," and shewing it ; but if the good 
Samaritan has neither the " ass," nor the " wine and oil," 
nor the " twopence/' the will is at once taken for the 
deed. Much more in the matter of mere ritual. May 
we not suppose as much in the case of the law of Moses ? 
or rather of Him who loves " mercy" more than " sacri- 
fice?" 

What can be plainer than that, if, as our critic justly 
argues, it would be impossible to comply with raauy of 
the laws in the wilderness, — though intended for observ- 
ance in future time, and in the permanent abodes of 
Canaan, — such impossibility was, per se, a sufficient ex- 
cuse for not observing them ? All this we should reason- 
ably expect from any legislator in his senses. And this 
granted, away fly many of the stupendous yet utterly 
absurd difficulties which our pseudo-Colenso has con- 
jured up ; unless, indeed, the reader choose to suppose 
Moses, or rather God, harder and more inexorable than 
the Egyptian taskmasters themselves. 

How, he asks, how, in the name of wonder, could 
the Israelites in the desert procure the 264 pigeons per 



LETTER VIII. 59 

diem, or 90,000 annually ? or, if they were offered, how 
could three priests (here, by the way, he assumes there 
were but three, of w T hich more anon) eat them ? Why, as 
he insists with arithmetical accuracy, it is 88 per day ! 
Well, if the pigeons were not to be had, it is certain 
that the people could not offer them, and would have 
abundant reason for not offering them ; and there is an 
end of that difficulty : and as three priests, sure enough, 
could not eat them, so they would happily not have 
them to eat ; and that rids us of another difficulty. Or 
does this writer really mean to say, that the Jewish 
legislator was so much worse than Draco, as to punish 
disobedience when it was impossible to obey ? or worse 
than the tyrant from whom Israel had just escaped, — 
who, at all events, did not demand bricks without clay, 
though he did " without straw." Would Moses, or He 
whom Moses represented, demand that pigeons were to 
be offered whether pigeons were to be had or not ? He, 
who expressly says that his equitable principle is to 
exact obedience only where it is possible to pay it ; and 
who has told us, that " a man is accepted according to 
what he hath" — pigeons or what not — " and not accord- 
ing to what he hath not V s 

When the mayor of a French town apologized to 
Henry IV. for not firing a salute in his honour, by say- 
ing that " he had no artillery," it was at once accepted 



60 LETTER VIII. 

as a release from all obligation in the matter ; and though 
the mayor, who seems to have been as stolid as our 
critic, is said to have wished to give nineteen other good 
reasons for the omission, his majesty was pleased to be 
content with this one. According to our pseudo- Colenso, 
God is not half so reasonable as Henry IV. If the 
critic had been Henry IV. he would doubtless have 
demanded the salute though there w r as no artillery ; or 
at least the remaining nineteen reasons for the omis- 
sion! 

Similar observations apply to the assumptions (they 
are nothing more) that the Israelites must, according to 
the story, have had, throughout their sojourn in the 
desert, prodigious herds of cattle to supply the imagined 
continual demands of sacrifice. If they had, he argues, 
how could such multitudes of cattle be fed ? and if 
they had not, how could they complete the toll of vic- 
tims ? Who, but a man determined to make out a case, 
could fail to see that the one difficulty answers the 
other? If they had not cattle for all the sacrifices, 
all the sacrifices were not offered ; if they had all the 
cattle, then all the cattle must have been somehow fed. 
In the former case, as before, the involuntary omission 
would, from the nature of things, meet with the usual 
indulgence. 

I think it highly probable that the Israelites had but 



LETTER VIII. 61 

little cattle after the first year, till after the conquest of 
Midian ; that is, till they approached the end of their 
pilgrimage. Everything shews, that between the pass- 
over in the second year in the wilderness of Sinai, and 
that on the cessation of the manna, that is, during thirty- 
eight years of their wanderings, the passover was inter- 
mitted, and perhaps many other rites involving sacrifice ; 
on which a few words presently. Certainly, few allu- 
sions to cattle are to be found after the first year or so, 
till the closing years of the pilgrimage in the desert. It 
appears they had much cattle when they set out ; they 
had much towards the end of their desert sojourn when 
they had " spoiled the Midianites f and they had doubt- 
less some cattle during the whole period, but there is no 
proof that they had many. Now, it is curious that 
during the interval in question, and after the manna 
began to fall, little mention is made of cattle ; which 
could hardly have failed to be otherwise had the narra- 
tive meant to say that they existed in any considerable 
numbers, so as to be the prodigious encumbrance our 
critic's interpretation supposes. Possibly, as the pass- 
over demands in Egypt would seriously diminish the 
reproductive power of the flocks (as this very critic sug- 
gests must have been the case), so the only recorded pass- 
over in the wilderness (that at Sinai) may have very 
opportunely — not to say designedly — operated in the 



62 LETTER VIII. 

same direction, and made the stock in something like 
proportion to the scanty pasturage. 

As to the intermission of the passover, that is gene- 
rally admitted ; and both that, and the probable sus- 
pension of many of the sacrifices, may be argued from a 
number of " undesigned coincidences" in the Pentateuch, 
which I commend to the diligent attention of some 
future editor of Blunt's admirable little work. Every- 
thing would seem to point to this conclusion. For 
example, if they had but scanty flocks, we need not 
wonder that no observance of the passover is mentioned ; 
the passover would drop from necessity, and no one could 
be blamed for it, on the principle already laid down. 
Another like cause would seem to necessitate the inter- 
mission ; they were commanded to keep the passover 
with unleavened bread ; now, as long as the manna fell, 
they had no bread. In curious harmony with all this, 
there is, as I have said, no allusion to a passover during 
the fall of manna ; and when we next hear of it, it is in 
connection with the cessation of manna and the re- 
sumption of corn bread (Joshua v. 10-12). At the same 
period, the avowedly intermitted rite of circumcision was 
resumed. The previous neglect of that would seem to 
intimate the contemporaneous suspension of the passover, 
because, by express law, only the males who were circum- 
cised were permitted to partake of it. This last rite was 



LETTER VIII. 63 

expressly laid down to be an essential preliminary to a 
participation in the other. Again, the intense longing 
for "flesh? as a new variety of diet, after the people 
began to " loath the manna," would also seem to indicate 
that they had then no large herds of cattle with them. 
" But now our soul is dried away," said the people ; 
" there is nothing at all, besides this manna, before our 
eyes," Xumb. xi. 6. These and other allusions, all of 
them casual, picked up here and there, dropped " unde- 
signedly ; ' in the midst of other matter — but of course all 
the more striking on that account — favour the two-fold 
conclusion, that during the period in question, the cattle 
of the Israelites were few, and that the passover, and 
probably many of the rites involving sacrifice, were 
omitted. By the way, if scanty flocks and no corn 
necessitated the omission of the passover, must they not 
have diminished many other offerings? How many 
imperatively required meal and wine and oil ! And 
I apprehend too, the "shew-bread" was not made of 
manna. 

It would not, perhaps, be very extravagant to suspect 
that the suspension of many of the rites was not only 
necessitated by the privations of the strictly penal 
sojourn in the desert — an abnormal condition, into 
which their rebellion alone plunged the people — but 
was designed also as a part of the punishment of that 



64 LETTEE VIII. 

contumacious generation, whose "carcases fell in the 
wilderness." It may well be surmised, at any rate, that 
it was not among them that the Mosaic dispensation 
was to be administered in all its completeness and 
splendour. 

But be this as it may, everything in the history — 
express declarations, obvious facts, necessary inferences, 
oblique allusions — all shew that the Levitical dispensa- 
tion not only never was carried into effect, but was not 
even intended to be carried into effect more than 
partially, in the desert. Yet the contrary is the theory 
of our critic, and his very chief est objections vanish 
with it. 

I have mentioned above, his assumption that there 
were but three priests. It is an assumption, and nothing 
more. It does not follow because no others are men- 
tioned, that there were none. It is only by accident 
that the son of Eleazar is mentioned ; but Ithamar may 
have had sons too, and Eleazar more than one. At any 
rate, the grandsons of Aaron would be quite old enough 
to have sons of an age to enter upon the priest's office 
long before the close of the forty years. Certainly 
there were more than three when the people passed over 
Jordan and approached Jericho, for we find then there 
were seven — and the language suggests that there might 
be more than seven — who were employed to " blow the 



LETTER VIII. 65 

trumpets " at the siege of that city. It is precarious to 
conjecture merely from the silence of a writer. 

But even if the priests, technically so called, were at 
first limited to three (though we are certain, from the 
fact just mentioned, that at the later period there were 
more), the difficulty is entirely an arbitrary one, and 
may be effectually met by the very considerations by 
which this critic manages to answer, unwittingly, his 
own objections. If, as he so unanswerably proves, there 
was no pasture for more than a few sheep and oxen in 
the wilderness, the priests' principal functions nearly 
ceased of necessity, just as circumcision did, without any 
one being blamable or being blamed for it ; so that the 
three priests may really, for aught we know, have had a 
rather easy time of it, instead of being overwhelmed 
with the superhuman toil which our critic loads them 
with. On the other hand, even if there were a million 
of cattle and ten millions of pigeons, and only three 
priests at one time, then, on the same principle as before, 
namely, that God expects nobody to perform impossi- 
bilities, the said priests would no more be called to eat, 
each, eighty pigeons per diem in this case, than the 
people to provide them if they were not to be had. The 
sacrificial services, like the rite of circumcision itself, 
would be in that case suspended. 

And, lastly, if the services that were not remitted 



66 LETTEK VIII. 

were beyond the power of the three priests to perform, 
we may be certain that, as in all like cases — I do not 
say of Divine, but of merely human administration — 
extra-official help would supply a deficiency of the pro- 
per functionaries ; and as in the Chronicles we find that the 
Levites, for that very reason, on certain occasions helped 
the priests, by assuming a part of their peculiar functions, 
so it may well have been the case at an earlier period. 
The critic says, indeed, that we do not read of any such 
arrangement at that time ; and with other solutions of 
the difficulty, we do not need it. I would only remark, 
on this point, that when an author is silent, we need not 
fill up the gaps (if w T e must or will conjecture), by sup- 
posing something which makes him an idiot, and is 
foreign to all the analogies in the administration of all 
laws, human and divine ; least of all in interpreting a 
system purporting to be enjoined by Him who expressly 
avows that he loves " mercy better than sacrifice," and 
prefers the " spirit " to the " letter." — But, in truth, we 
do not need the solution. With the Levites to perform 
all the menial duties of the tabernacle ; with its other 
duties limited by the necessary circumstances of the life 
in the wilderness, as plainly indicated in the narrative ; 
and, lastly, waiting proof that the priests were only 
three — I am not alarmed by our critic's statement of the 
prodigious labours of these overtasked functionaries, and 



LETTER VIII. 67 

am quite certain that, if, as he suggests, it was impossible 
for the people to get the 90,000 " turtle-doves or young 
pigeons " per anmtm, they were not obliged to offer 
them. 

Lastly, as another postulate — a necessary condition 
of the full complement of his difficulties — our critic im- 
plies that all the exactions of the law, however various 
and troublesome, would, when possible, be sure to be 
most conscientiously paid by the Israelites ; rather a 
modest demand on behalf of that very generation who 
were, at that moment, suffering the capital penalty of 
uttermost ingratitude and rebellion ! We shall next 
have him supposing that the laws of England, even to 
the very least minutiae, are all conscientiously observed 
by our u tickets-of-leave." If he asks (as on one or two 
occasions he does), whether we can suppose the Israelites 
would refuse to obey the voice of God himself, I must 
answer, first, that the history teaches us that they did ; 
and secondly (as Warburton said to Bolingbroke, when 
he urged a like objection), that we need not wonder at 
it ; since all men in all ages have been doing the very 
same, and that, too, in the case of laws which they not 
only confess to be Divine, but infinitely more momentous 
than any laws of ritual can be. 

And now, is it easy to suppose that a genuine Bishop 
would feel such spite against his own i( canonical books/' 



68 LETTER IX. 

as to insist on these perfectly gratuitous postulates for 
the very purpose of making those books appear incred- 
ible ; and, above all, blindly insist on difficulties, even 
when they actually destroy and neutralize one another ? 
So few pigeons, if any, to be got, and yet the priests 
having to eat so many ! However, it is well when an 
objector is inconsistent enough to take this course. He 
is like the poor woman at " Crocodilople," in Southey's 
ballad, who killed the young "Prince Crocodiles," by 
thrusting 

" The head of one into the throat of another, 
And made each Prince Crocodile choke his brother." 

Yours truly, Vindex. 



LETTEE IX. 

December 4, 1862. 

My dear Friend — How shall I characterize the 
unexampled absurdity of this writer in pressing popular 
language to death, for the purpose of making difficulties 
where no mortal else would feel any ? Can you 
imagine that, for this object, a Bishop of the Church 
would insist on interpreting the Bible, as we may be 
certain neither he nor any one else would interpret any 
other book? Instances of his more than Voltairian 



LETTER IX. 69 

intrepidity, in inventing objections in this way, you have 
in his Chapters iv. and v. For the former : in Lev. viii. 
1-4, on the consecration of Aaron, it is thus written : — 
" And Jehovah spake unto Moses, saying, gather thou 
all the congregation together at the door of the taber- 
nacle of the congregation. And Moses did as Jehovah 
commanded him. And the assembly was gathered unto 
the door of the tabernacle of the congregation." The 
congregation, then, assembled at the door of the taber- 
nacle ; and our critic wants to know if we are really to 
suppose that the whole 600,000 grow T n-up men were 
there ? He does seem to think, indeed, that the whole 
2,400,000 might (if he were not somewhat indulgent) 
be fairly demanded by the expression ; and, indeed, on 
his principle of literal accuracy, I do not think he ought 
to let Moses off with less than meaning to include every 
sucking-child among them ! However, to take the 
assembly at only 600,000 ancl # odcl " adults in the prime 
of life ;" — in accordance with the third most modest 
postulate of which I have already spoken, he is bent on 
" supposing that all the congregation of adult males had 
given due heed to the Divine summons, and had hastened 
to take their stand, side by side, as closely as possible, 
in front, not only of the door, but of the whole end of 
the tabernacle in which the door was/' Generous con- 
cession again of more space than might be granted ! 

F 



70 LETTER IX. 

And, first of all, lie proves that, if they were at the door 
of the tabernacle, that must mean that they were within 
the court ; and as this court, by his own precise measure- 
ment, could not be more than 1692 square yards, he 
asks, and surely with reason, how could 600,000 men 
stand within it? He might have dispensed with all 
this, if he had but chosen to remember that not one of 
the 600,000, except the Priests and Levites, were per- 
mitted to enter it at all, on pain of death. To be sure, 
it would still be on pain of death, if the whole 600,000 
were crammed into it, for the u Black Hole" of Calcutta 
would be infinite space to it. I say he has chosen to 
forget the above restriction ; for, in another mood, he 
seems to remember it too well (p. 1 23), and to make the 
prohibition extend, not only to the people in general, 
but also to the Levites ; that is, he lets into the court 
those who were forbiden to go, and shuts out those who 
were not forbidden ; but, of course, for the purpose 
of proving the Pentateuch fabulous, all is lawful ! 
Well, supposing the court "tabooed" (1 will also 
suppose the curtains, which surrounded it, raised 
for the sake of enabling the folks to see the ceremony), 
our author then proves that if the crowd stood abreast, 
not only the width of the door of the tabernacle, but 
even the width of the whole end of it, they would extend 



LETTER IX. 71 

twenty miles ; and if the whole width of the court, no 
less than four miles ! He then innocently wants to 
know whether all could have heard Moses' words, or 
been intelligent spectators of the ceremony ? Why, no ; 
the farthest ranks, I think you will grant, could not 
even have seen Moses, unless they had good telescopes, 
of which, as our critic might say, the Pentateuch says 
nothing. But was ever anything more absurd ? When 
a community is invited to become spectators of a public 
transaction, and it passes in the name of the community 
in virtue of those who are there, is any one so ridiculous 
as to suppose that every soul that was invited, or that 
even might have attended, has attended ? 

When it is said that the county of Kent met on 
Penenden Heath, does any one argue that it is false, for 
not a hundredth-part of the population was there ? And 
so in a thousand cases. — Multitudes would as usual be 
absent from really good and sufficient reasons, and multi- 
tudes of people more, because indolence and other causes 
told them there were good and sufficient reasons ; many 
more, doubtless, because they did not choose to go. 
Our author, to be sure, takes it for granted that the 
Israelites were so unlike all other people, or rather, so 
unlike themselves, that there was not a soul of the 
600,000 who would neglect so plain a summons of duty ; 



72 LETTER IX. 

as if all mankind do not often neglect what they them- 
selves own to be the unequivocal voice of God speaking 
within them ! 

Not only would the business be transacted, as usual, 
by those who were present, and who were representa- 
tives of the rest, but, for aught we know, the " elders" 
and " captains of hundreds and thousands" might be the 
commissioned representatives of the rest, and the lan- 
guage would still be perfectly in accordance with 
common speech. 

But how does our author triumph (chap, v.) when 
Moses and Joshua are said to have addressed all the 
congregation — the whole congregation ! What can " all" 
and "whole" mean less than all the men, women, and 
children — sucking babes into the bargain ? 

Now, as he truly says, even the cries of the babies in 
arms in an assembly " as large as the population of 
London," would have drowned the voice of any speaker. 
I should think so. The only absurdity in the thing is, 
that any one should be absurd enough to suppose the 
author of the Pentateuch, (who was at least no fool), to 
mean any such absurdities. 

"All the world knows that f "All the world is 
gone after him;" "Peter the Hermit precipitated all 
Europe on Asia," says one historian; "All London 
flocked forth in a paroxysm of returning loyalty," says 



LETTER IX. 73 

another ; a All Paris was crowded into the Champs de 
Mars/' says a third. No sooner is anything of the sort 
said, than a critic of the pseudo-Colenso type asks 
whether it can possibly be true, that all the lying-in 
women and new-born babes were included ? because, if 
not, the statement is not historic. Whether we can even 
suppose all the hospitals and prisons emptied on the 
occasion ? Whether it can be seriously meant that all 
the houses were absolutely deserted, and not a kitchen- 
fire smoking, or a joint of mutton cooking, on that 
memorable day ? It is a pity our author did not con- 
sult a concordance to see how many more absurdities he 
might have made out of this popular use of " all," and 
the like words, in the course of the Pentateuch and the 
Book of Joshua. Thus we are told, that "all Israel 
stoned Achan." It would have been interesting to learn 
from our mathematical pedant, how many cubic feet of 
rough masonry were thus piled about poor Achan by the 
entire 2,400,000 ; he might get his average somewhere 
between the pebble (thrown, of course, by proxy) con- 
tributed by the new-born infant, and the " lump of a 
two-year-old" (as Miss Edgeworth's Irish witness would 
say), hurled by the stalwart arm of one of H the mighty 
men of valour!" Very superfluous was it for the his- 
torian to add, " And they raised over him a great heap 
of stones unto this day." If they did so, after pitching 



74 LETTER IX. 

2,400,000 stones into him, at him, and on him, it was 
certainly a work of supererogation. 

But to return to Joshua's instructions to the whole 
congregation. Not only would most persons suppose 
the conditions of the narrative satisfied, if " the heads of 
tribes/ 7 "the elders of the people," " captains of hundreds, 
and captains of thousands," if, in short, a large assembly, 
represented the nation, and communicated the words of 
Joshua by the regular means organized for that purpose ; 
not only so, I say, but the reader may see, that we have 
in other passages an easy key to the true and natural 
interpretation of the terms thus strangely tortured and 
wrested. Thus we are told, Ex. xix. 3-8 : cc And Moses 
went up unto God, and the Lord called unto him out of 
the mountain, saying, Thus shalt thou say to the house 
of Jacob, and tell the children of Israel ; ye have seen 
what I did unto the Egyptians, and how I bare you on 
eagles' wings, and brought you unto myself. Now, 
therefore, if ye will obey my voice indeed, and keep my 
covenant, then ye shall be a peculiar treasure unto me 
above all people ; for all the earth is mine. . . . These 
are the words which thou shalt speak unto the children 
of Israel. And Moses came, and called for the elders of the 
people, and laid before their faces all these words which 
the Lord commanded him. And all the people answered 



LETTER IX. 7-) 

together, and said, All that the Lord hath spoken we will 
do. And Moses returned the words of the people unto 
the Lord." 

" The journey to London," says Macaulay, speaking 
of the restoration of Charles II., "was a continued 
triumph. The whole road from Rochester was bordered 
by booths and tents, and looked like an interminable fair. 
Everywhere flags were flying, bells and music sounding, 
wine and ale flowing in rivers to the health of him whose 
return was the return of peace, of law, and of freedom." 
What havoc would such a critic as the pseudo-Colenso 
make of such language ! " Thirty miles of booths !" he 
would say ; " Wine and ale flowing in rivers ! Who can 
believe it?" 

It is a great comfort that the critic has at present left 
the sublime poetry of the Hebrews (with one slight ex- 
ception, in the case of a single image, which I may notice 
in another letter) untouched ; he has not brought his 
tailor's measure, with its tenths of inches marked off, to 
see whether their great bards habited their thoughts in a 
sufficiently precise and close-fitting dress. " The sound 
of a shaken leaf shall chase them," says the Pentateuch, 
in the briefest and sublimest image which can express 
the uttermost effect of panic terror. Such a ' critic as 
this would say that he really could not credit it ; for if 



76 LETTEE IX. 

it were true, a moderate-sized oak, felicitously posited 
on a gusty autumn clay, would rout the largest army 
ever brought into the field ! 

In truth, the mode of interpreting ordinary human 
language indulged in by this critic, would, if it were at 
all common, deserve to be considered a sort of disease : 
it should be called "Delirium Arithmetieum" or H Mania 
Pernumerans." If men were commonly pestered with it, 
it would be misery to open one's mouth. To interpret 
speech, with no power of taking the meaning from popu- 
lar usage, — from the context, — from conditions founded 
on the supposition that we have imaginations as well as 
the noble faculty of counting our fingers, bespeaks a man 
devoid of common sense. If language were used as this 
critic would seem to require Moses to use it, not only 
would all natural freedom of style be destroyed ; not 
only would it necessitate a most strained, and, after all, 
vain attempt at absolute and literal precision, compared 
with which an Act of Parliament would be eloquence ; 
not only would it destroy all trope and metaphor, and 
the beauties of figurative language generally ; but to 
talk at all would be an intolerable nuisance. Hardly 
a phrase could come out of our mouths, of w T hich we 
should not be expected to give an exact limitation, in order 
to satisfy some soulless and brainless Aristarch, and pre- 
vent his concluding that we were as great idiots as himself. 



LETTER X. 77 

In short, there is no end of the absurdities which may 
be fastened on anything spoken by man in the ordinary 
language of men, if the " delirium arithmeticum" but 
once take possession of the critic. He will be as much 
at a loss as Peter Simple, who, when the coachman 
touched his hat and said, ft Please remember the coach- 
man, sir/' replied, ''Remember you! Certainly I will 
try, if it will give you any pleasure." " The lad's a 
fool/' very naturally muttered the coachman. Some 
suppose that the extreme form of this bondage to the 
"letter" is now and then an effect of too exclusive 
devotion to the mathematics. If so, it is the hardest 
thing one can say of the mathematics. But if it were 
a genuine effect of the study (which I do not believe), 
I should be disposed to alter the old proverb, and, in- 
stead of saying " There is no fool like an old fool," 
say, " There is no fool like a mathematical fool." — Be- 
lieve me, yours truly, Vindex. 



LETTEE X. 

December 8, 1862. 
My dear Fpjend — I see that many of the periodicals 
have noticed the book ascribed to Bishop Colenso ; but 
I cannot say that the way in which they clo it at all 



78 LETTER X. 

convinces me that he wrote it, or any Christian at all. 
You will observe that all of them, that have the slightest 
proclivity to scepticism, are shouting, " Io Triumphe !" 
and the more loudly, the stronger those proclivities are. 
On the other hand, all that reverence the Bible are full 
of indignation that a Christian Bishop should have 
written such a book. If they were as charitable as I 
am, they would have considered those very phenomena 
an indication that it was not written by a Christian 
Bishop. When did a Conservative candidate catch none 
but the Eadical votes ? 

But I proceed with my own reasons for doubting ; 
and among the strongest is the singular disingenuousness 
(I really should be sorry to suppose any ordinary scep- 
tic, much less a Christian Bishop, guilty of it) in the 
account of the Exodus itself. The wildest license, both 
of suppression and invention of facts, is there indulged in, 
in order to give an impression of the utter impossibility 
of that event. Our critic not only affirms that the 
" passover " is represented as originally instituted, the 
lamb got, cooked, and eaten on the very night of the 
Exodus itself, but that in that same night the people 
(2,400,000) called in all their flocks and herds (2,000,000) 
from the whole country, mustered at Eameses, and 
journeyed the next morning over the arid and stony 
track to Succoth ; and that the story even requires that 



LETTER X. 79 

we believe that " infants and young children " performed 
this same feat — " twenty miles a day on foot ! " (page 47). 
Now, on the hardihood with which he has expunged 
from the text the full directions for the passover, given 
nearly a fortnight before, in order that he may more 
deeply colour this fiction of midnight confusion, I have 
already commented. But even passing by that, his ac- 
count is as complete a fancy-piece as ever a novelist 
indulged in. Supposing any truth in the history at all, 
is it possible to imagine that the Israelites knew nothing 
of their coming deliverance till the night of the Exodus 
itself ? Must they not have been living in instant ex- 
pectation of it for weeks ? Does not the third chapter 
of Exodus expressly commission Moses to tell the people 
that the day of liberation drew nigh ? Does not 
the sixth chapter renew that commission ? Could they 
witness in stupid indifference successive judgments, ever 
increasing in severity, which were not only to make the 
Egyptians willing to let them go, but eager to thrust 
them out altogether ? If these plagues really took place 
according to the history, were they without significance, 
so that when the last plague fell, the people were all 
comfortably asleep, and roused as suddenly and in as 
stark ignorance of what was going on as the Bishop of 
Natal (such is the judicious parallel of this critic) on a 
midnight rumour of an utterly unexpected raid of Zulus ? 



80 LETTER X. 

Our critic may say, perhaps, that he does not believe 
Exodus iii. ; does not believe Exodus vi. ; does not be- 
lieve that ever the plagues occurred ; hardly believes a 
word of the history ; and, I have no doubt, he would 
speak most truly. Very well ; let him say so then : but 
let him not argue that a narrative, as it stands, is incon- 
sistent and incredible, by just taking his pen and scor- 
ing out statements that make it consistent, and then 
filling up the gaps ad libitum with any whimsies of his 
own, which shall make it seem otherwise. Yet this is 
just what is done in the present case. His description 
is all a bubble blown out of the simple words, " And the 
children of Israel journeyed from Eameses to Succoth, 
about six hundred thousand on foot, that were men, be- 
sides children. And a mixed multitude went up also 
with them ; and flocks and herds, even very much 
cattle." While our critic has invented all imaginable 
details, which may in any way tend to render the story 
incredible, the simple narrative itself tells us next to 
nothing, except the fact ; and this is supplemented as he 
pleases. With characteristic effrontery, he rebukes 
Kurtz for supposing that there may have been pauses 
between Eameses and Succoth. Has our critic any more 
right to say there were none ? The simple truth is, that 
the history leaves us wholly to conjecture in this matter; 
and our critic has certainly abused this privilege to the 



LETTER X. 81 

utmost. But then, that these purely gratuitous con- 
jectures should always tell against the veracity of the 
Pentateuch, never in what may explain or diminish a 
difficulty, is what I cannot reconcile with the character 
of the reputed author. The fact is, that, for aught we 
know, the Israelites may have been several clays about 
their journey to Succoth ; we do not know that they all 
mustered, men and cattle, at Eameses, or in what lines 
of direction, or in what proportions, or at what intervals 
between different detachments, they fell into the march ; 
still less that all was compressed into one day's work. 
One thing at all events is certain — our critic proves too 
much. If his objections, on the score of confusion, in- 
convenience, and distress, the presence of the " sick, 
aged, infirm," and so on, are to be taken for a demonstra- 
tion that the thing could not be, it is certain that many 
an event of authentic history — the extensive deportation 
of ancient nations under the great oriental monarchies, 
Scythian and Mongolian migrations, the migration of the 
Helvetii, so particularly described by Csesar — may also 
be pronounced impossible. It is not to be forgotten, 
indeed, that if there be any truth in the narrative at all, 
the Israelites were under miraculous guidance and pro- 
tection ; a fact which our critic always forgets, or more 
properly speaking, would, I daresay, deny ; but even 
apart from that, it is little except his own fancy which 



82 LETTER X. 

makes the Exodus more difficult than many of the great 
migrations of history just referred to ; for all of them 
must have been cumbered with sick, lying-in women, 
and sucking babies, more than enough. That it was, 
doubtless, attended with many incidental straits and 
hardships, we may well believe. Does the Bible say it 
was without them ? Does not the narrative imply it ? 
Did not the people, under the pressure of hunger and 
thirst, often look back with ungrateful regrets to the 
bondage they had left ? Were they not willing to barter 
their liberty and all its privileges, if they could but have 
got back to the leeks and garlic and full flesh-pots of 
Egypt? 

Our author asks, what did they do with the sick, 
lying-in women, and children ? 

It is sufficient for us to say, we do not know ; we 
only know, first, that the story has not a syllable about 
their travelling twenty miles on foot, as he foolishly 
says it requires us to believe ; secondly, that whatever the 
means of transport used for such as required it, the diffi- 
culty would be no more insuperable than similar obstacles 
in the way of other migrations ; and, thirdly, that no 
migrating nation, probably, had half the facilities for 
such a movement, if there be any truth in the history at 
all — such a vis a tergo — as the Israelites had on that 
occasion. After such a series of plagues, and such a 



LETTER X. 83 

crushing calamity to conclude them, the Egyptians 
would be willing to give not only "jewels and orna- 
ments," but anything on earth, to get rid of such guests ; 
and probably never had so welcome a sight as their 
backs. Horses, mules, waggons — the whole power of 
the kingdom at such a moment would have been at the 
disposal of the exiles, if necessary. I pretend not to say 
how the details of the Exodus were managed ; for the 
history is silent. I only say that, taking the relations 
between the two nations to be what the narrative repre- 
sents them, such a mode of supplementing the silence of 
the narrative as that just suggested, is infinitely more 
probable than our critic's whimsical inventions, of the 
people all being roused at a moment's notice, and lying- 
in women and children going twenty miles on foot! 
The former supposition goes on what not only were 
likely to be, but must have been the feelings of the 
Egyptians. The Israelites could not be in so much 
haste to go, as the Egyptians, eager that they should be 
gone ; " For we be all dead men/' said they. By the 
way, I wonder our critic did not take that literally, and 
prove that the history says that the Egyptians spoke 
after they were all dead ! But I must notice one 
example of the kind in this connection. It is the 
instance referred to it in the preceding letter. 

" Having done all this," he says, speaking of the 



84 LETTER X. 

prodigious toils he has crowded into the passover night, 
" they were started again from Barneses that very same 
day, and marched on to Succoth, not leaving a single 
sick or infirm person, a single woman in childbirth, or 
even a ' single hoof behind them" (page 62). Thus, as 
usual, he takes an eloquent metonymy, in which Moses 
expresses the demands of Jehovah to Pharaoh, " Our 
cattle also shall go with us : There shall not a hoof be 
left behind" in strict literality ; and would doubtless 
think the whole history invalidated, if he could but 
find that a single Israelitish cow had gone astray ! 

In short, I think our pseudo-Colenso's "new ver- 
sion" of the incidents of the Exodus, one of the most 
remarkable efforts of disingenuous perversion of a nar- 
rative I ever read. I cannot think that a Bishop of the 
Church — whose whole tendencies and bias must be, if 
only in respect for his position and ordination vows, in 
favour of retaining as much of the narrative as possible 
— would thus go out of his way, and with evident em- 
pressement, not only to interpret, but supplement, the 
history uniformly in the sense least favourable to his 
sacred books.— Believe me, yours truly, 

Vindex. 



LETTER XI. 85 



LETTER XI. 






December 15, 1862. 

My dear Friend — I know not how to ascribe to 
Bishop Colenso, or to any other Christian man, or in- 
deed to any candid opponent of revelation, the perfectly 
arbitrary and self-sufficient way in which this writer 
sets aside every consideration which can bar the road to 
his grotesque conclusion, that every Hebrew mother, if 
the history be true, " must have had, on the average, 
forty-two sons!" I count it absolutely certain that 
nothing but a previously strong bias in favour of a fore- 
gone conclusion could have induced him thus sum- 
marily to set aside all such considerations. 

Still less can I believe that any one, or at least a 
man with anything like a mathematical reputation, (and 
Bishop Colenso is a mathematician, if he be nothing 
else), would have fallen into such a blunder, even in the 
application of his own hypothesis. For, on the very 
same principles, we may prove that every English 
mother (and we have had no Pharaoh to massacre 
any male children among us, and therefore to diminish 
our full tale of living " first-born," if they are to repre- 
sent the number of mothers) must have at least from 
twenty to thirty children ! 

G 



86 LETTEE XI. 

But I will first briefly mention the by no means 
unreasonable mitigations of the difficulty about the 
"First-born/' which not only orthodox interpreters, 
(whose solutions this complaisant critic is so fond of 
contemptuously stigmatizing as utterly futile and un- 
truthful), but modest Eationalists, have suggested as 
probable. One obvious thing is, that it is possible, on 
the principles laid down in a previous letter, that we 
may not be in possession of the true number originally 
in the text, and that some such error may lie at the 
bottom of the difficulty. This is, of course, not for a 
moment to be thought of ; for whenever a difficulty is 
to be urged, no one can exceed our author in his solici- 
tude to retain the text. 

Again : Michaelis, who is not very conspicuous for 
his orthodox proclivities, suggests that the " first-born" 
of the father, and not of the mother only, is intended ; 
and that, therefore, if polygamy prevailed, or to what- 
ever extent it did so, there might be several first-born of 
mothers, in the same family, and yet only one first-born 
of the father and the mother both. Certainly this sup- 
position seems most consistent with the instructions for 
the census, given in Num. iii. 40, 41. If it be inad- 
missible, then there must be supposed many " first- 
born" in the same family, and a father might speak with 
propriety of his five or six first-born sons I A phrase in- 



LETTER XL 87 

consistent, at least, with the legal and technical sense in 
which the term is used, when determining the rights of 
primogeniture, in the case of the first-born of two sepa- 
rate wives (Deut. xxi. 15, 17). — Michaelis, however, 
must go for nothing. Yet, his hypothesis is certainly 
probable enough to prevent any candid mind from being 
absolutely confident that it is false. 

Again : Bosenmuller (no hot partisan of orthodoxy) 
and many others favour the conjecture that the heads 
of families, though they might be "first-born" themselves, 
were not reckoned among the "first-born;" and this 
seems, at all events, a not improbable thing in itself. 
Certainly, if such restriction were not acted upon, 
" Moses and the princes," who conducted the census, 
must have had many odd and puzzling cases to decide. 
There is an old gentleman of eighty, for example, whose 
father and mother, having early left him an orphan, have 
been in the grave for more than half a century, and he 
does not know whether they had an infant son or 
daughter before him or not ; what is to be done with 
him? Another of seventy, whose parents have been 
dead forty years, fancies that he has heard that his 
mother had a still-born child, but can't be sure ; if not, 
he is a first-born. Another of sixty had a twin-sister, 
but which of them came into the world first he cannot 
say, father and mother, doctor and nurse, having long 



88 LETTEK XL 

since gone the way of all flesh. — If any one were asked 
to find out how many living first-born sons there were 
in the families of a village, I rather think it would not 
strike him to set down old men of seventy or eighty, 
who had been first-born sons, but whose fathers had 
been buried a score or two of years before, and who had 
first-born sons of their own in the prime of life. How- 
ever, though this principle would seem a tolerably 
reasonable one, it is as summarily set aside, for no reason 
that I can find, except the usual and all-sufficient one — 
it will mitigate a difficulty. 

Another element for diminishing this objection is the 
fact mentioned by Kurtz, that the " first-born," accord- 
ing to the law of population, is more frequently a girl 
than a boy ; and that, therefore, the proportion in which 
there would be first-born sons would suffer a further 
diminution. Will it be believed that, in his eager de- 
sire to throw aside everything that can be urged in 
favour of the Pentateuch, our critic seems to hint a 
a doubt whether this natural law can have operated 
among the children of Israel : — " But in the case of the 
Hebrews, according to the story in the Pentateuch 
(whatever may be the case generally), the first-born 
was much more frequently a male thaij. a female" (p. 86). 
This is pretty well in one who, everywhere else, pro- 
ceeds only too absurdly to judge, in those far distant 



LETTER XL 89 

times and regions, by modern parallels, and to adjust 
everything to the meridian of London and the nine- 
teenth century. However, I daresay he knows well 
enough the greater importance attached to the male 
progeny throughout the whole of the Old Testament, 
and that it by no means implies that there were more 
sons than daughters, because the latter are less fre- 
quently mentioned. We should never have known that 
Moses had an elder sister, and that neither he nor 
Aaron was a " first-born," had it not been for the narra- 
tive of his rescue by Pharaoh's daughter. 

I do not indeed intend to say, that all, or any, of 
these elements of solution may be regarded as demon- 
strably true ; I only say that they are very probable, 
and, coming from such men as they do, no impartial 
investigator of truth, no man with the slightest particle 
of modesty, would summarily dismiss them all, as not 
" of any use whatever for the purpose of relieving the 
difficulty I" 

But let us look at the results obtained from his own 
data. The males of twenty and upwards, he says, were 
600,000, and we must add about 300,000 for those under 
that age ; about 900,000 in all. Very well ; then 
divide 900,000 by 22,273, the number of the first-born, 
and it follows, it seems, that each mother must have 
had, on an average, more than forty sons ! Our author 



90 LETTER XL 

says 42, or as he more correctly puts it, 44 ; but then he 
takes Kurtz's rough guess as to the males being ] ,000,000. 
It is all guess work, to be sure ; but the higher the 
number, the more startling the absurdity our author 
brings out ; and this seems to have been his only 
reason for preferring 1,000,000 to 900,000, as the basis 
for calculating Hebrew fecundity. If one takes 900,000, 
it will give forty and a fraction, — if we must fall in 
with our author's exact humour ; but if a woman has 
forty children, the fraction, I suppose, is of little conse- 
quence, more or less. Now, it is true that, according to 
this calculation, there might be, on an average, only one 
first-born to more than forty males ; but it remained 
for this critic to suppose that that is the same thing as 
saying that every mother must have had more than 
forty sons ! For what can be more ridiculous than such 
a calculation ? All it shews is that our author can at 
least work a long division sum ; that 900,000, divided by 
22,273, will give some such result approximately. But 
is it not obvious, that since every family in which the 
a first-born " son was dead, however numerous the rest of 
the males ; every family in which the first-born was a 
daughter, however numerous the brothers ; every family 
in which the infant, though a male, was under a month 
old ; and every family in which the eldest was the son 
of a widow, were, as regards this census, thrown out of 



LETTER XI. 91 

the reckoning altogether, though their males formed 
part of the population, the number of mothers cannot 
be the same with the number of the first-born sons? 
All the males, our wise critic says, must be placed 
under one or other of the mothers of these 22,273 ! 
What makes the fallacy more ridiculous is, that 
he has in this very chapter suggested the two prin- 
cipal exceptions. " Except/' he says, * of course, any 
cases where the first-born of any family was a 
daughter, or was dead, of which we shall speak pre- 
sently," p. 84. Except ! But these exceptions vitiate 
the whole calculation, and if set aside, will allow us to 
say that every English mother has, at least, from twenty 
to thirty children ; ten or fifteen sons, and ten or fifteen 
daughters ! If any one will take the trouble to calcu- 
late among any one hundred families, even on this 
writer's premises, he will find the result will a little 
surprise him. — I will try it upon a chance case. There 
are five families, all within about a stone's cast of where 
I am writing, and presenting about the varieties we 
generally find in our population. The first family con- 
sists of twelve, — seven sons and five daughters ; but the 
eldest is a daughter; the second consists of four sons 
only, and the eldest being a son, there is therefore one 
first-born ; the third, of six, — five sons and one daugh- 
ter, but the daughter again the eldest ; the fourth, — of 



92 LETTER XI. 

three sons and one daughter, but there was another, a 
son who was still-born. The fifth, a couple who were 
recently married, and have one little boy, but under a 
month old. Of the five fathers, an old gentleman of 
near . seventy is also a first-born ; and if, as Michaelis 
and Kosenmuller conjecture, he ought not to be reckoned, 
(I think he could prove that he was a first-born, if put 
to it), here are, counting the five fathers, twenty -five 
males ; and, counting the five mothers, thirteen females ; 
— thirty-eight of the population, and only one first-born 
among them; and, according to the reasoning of this 
critic — that " each of the males must have had one or 
other of the first-born males as the first-born of his own 
family " — the mother of this first-born had twenty-five 
sons ! Even if the first-born father be reckoned, there 
will be but two "first-lorn " to thirty-eight of the popu- 
lation. Some scribblers in our more scurrilous prints 
(as this reckless writer might have anticipated) have 
made themselves very merry with his grotesque deduc- 
tion as to the prolific character of the Hebrew mothers ; 
they^may, on similar principles, make merry with their 
own ; and prove that every English mother is (to use 
Burke's classical allusion on another subject) "the sow 
of imperial augury," with her litter of thirty offspring 
about her. 

It may be said, perhaps, that it is not so absurd to 



LETTER XI. 93 

represent every English mother with ten or fifteen sons 
(besides daughters), as to represent her with forty sons. 
Why, no ; but impossibilities of any dimensions are 
equally good for a reductio ad dbsurdum ; and shew 
clearly that the principle which leads to them must be 
an absurd one. 

Our critic has the effrontery to add, that though 
every family which has a daughter for a first-born is to 
be deducted in the manner above mentioned, it will not 
affect the calculation ; that if an equal number of first- 
born daughters be supposed, then there will be in all 
44,546 first-born (sons and daughters) in all, and each 
mother will still have forty-two children — twenty-one 
sons and twenty-one daughters. 

He forgets that if he has to deal with the first-born 
* daughters " as with the " sons," then every family into 
which a son is first born, (however numerous the daugh- 
ters), will be, though doubtless it had a mother, as 
though it had none ; as also, every family in which the 
first-born, if a daughter, is dead, or any in which the 
first-born, when a daughter, is under a month; that is, 
we shall not have in either case the true number of 
the mothers at all determined by taking the number 
of first-born sons or first-born daughters, on the principle 
of this census. 

If, now, every first-born taken in families, — exclud- 



94 LETTER XI. 

ing the heads, — would, even in our country, represent 
from twenty-five to thirty of the population, how would 
it be if we had polygamy among us, and only he 
who was * first-born * both of father and mother was 
reckoned ? and if also we had had a Pharaoh for a few 
years, making a massacre of the male children for the 
purpose of keeping down the population ? The author 
allows that this last might tell on the result, and he 
makes a perfectly arbitrary and precarious deduction for 
it. We know not what the deduction should be, and 
therefore any such ratio is perfect guess-work ; but it is 
not unreasonable to infer that the number of " first- 
born " might represent in such a case not only twenty, 
but double the number of the male population* 

It is not the part of the Pentateuch to teach us social 
statistics ; but many facts are presented there, which 
are well worth further investigation as curious vouchers 
for the authenticity of the narrative. Thus the ratio of 
the entire number of the tribe of Levi, to that of the 

* Kosenmuller's candid note on this subject is well worth 
reading. I cite a sentence : — " Vel hodie apud nos e septem, 
octo aut decem conjugiis, etsi omnibus illis mascula prole nume- 
rosissimis, vix iinum alterumve reperienms quod primam prolem 
filium susceptum alat ; reliqua omnia, quia in iis puella primi 
partus honorem prsecepit, onini spe primogeniti alicujus umquam 
habendi, sunt exclusa. Neque tamen hsec sufficere ad difncultatem 
illam prorsus tollendam — ." 



LETTER XI. 95 

men between the ages of thirty and fifty, tallies with the 
ratio approximately established by modern statistics ; 
and as one can hardly imagine the authors of the Pen- 
tateuch to have been much versed in economical science, 
we can only suppose it the effect of downright counting, 
unless we suppose it an unique instance of a lucky 
guess. Whenever solitary facts of this complex charac- 
ter occur in ancient history, and coincide with the in- 
ductions of modern science, we have symptoms of truth 
in the records. I commend this class of facts to the 
scrutiny of some new editor of Blunt ; there is still a 
rich harvest of " undesigned coincidences" in the Pen- 
tateuch, awaiting the patience and sagacity of any one 
who knows how to put in the sickle. In stimulating 
such labours, our present critic may be of use. Nearly 
all the great works on the " Evidences " have been 
evoked in this way, from the time of Celsus to the pre- 
sent. Christianity has often been accused of obtruding 
its evidences : never was a charge less true. It would 
fain be about its proper business in the world, if the 
world would let it alone. From first to last, all the 
literature of the u Evidences," has been " apologetic." — 
Tours truly, Vindex. 



96 LETTEE XII. 

LETTEE XII. 

" December 22, 1 862. 

My Deae Feiend — The Conclusion of this book, 
were it not for the name on the title-page, would alone 
perfectly convince me, that it was written by one who 
had thoroughly abandoned all belief in the claims of 
the Bible to be considered a special Divine revelation. 
He places it on a par, as it appears to me, with any 
other so-called sacred books. All of them are to be 
considered equally inspired by the Divine Spirit, so far 
as they contain any truth — of which, again, man's intel- 
lect is the absolute criterion. In fact, the Old Testament 
and the New, the Koran, the Shasters, the utterances of 
the Sikh Gooroos and of the disciples of Earn, contain 
in various degrees truth and falsehood, and stand much 
on the same level. 

That in every age there will be found men who have 
given expression to some sublime abstractions respect- 
ing the Deity, is very true ; but if we suppose that any 
such vague rhapsodies of poets or sages will really be 
an instrument of moral reformation to mankind, we 
must have read the history of the world to little pur- 
pose. Though certain abstract truths, or approximations 
to truths, may have been occasionally struck out by 



LETTER XII. 97 

philosophers, they needed to be conjoined with other 
truths, and to be expressed in other forms, to render 
them capable of interesting the minds and enlisting the 
affections of men, or even of impelling those who had 
uttered them to attempt to give them diffusion or make 
them victorious ; and, consequently, the profound reli- 
gious ignorance and gross superstitions of ancient Greece 
and Eome continued age after age, while the philosophers 
looked on in silent contempt, or (worse still) joined in 
the public rites with edifying solemnity of visage, but 
laughter in their hearts ; in short, lent their example, — 
more powerful than speculation, even if that had not 
been kept to themselves, — to perpetuate the popular de- 
lusions. As to any effect of the speculations of the Sikh 
Gooroos, or the disciples of Earn, or those of all the 
Hindu sages into the bargain, the condition, for ages, of 
the whole continent of India, — crowded with temples 
consecrated to superstitions equally senseless, filthy, and 
bloody, — is a sufficient answer. Our author seems to 
think, on the other hand, that those who despair of the 
Pentateuch, or even of the whole Bible, may turn to 
these "wise men of the East" with consolation, and fill 
that " vacuity of the heart " which the loss of their faith 
will occasion, by stuffing it with fragments of Hindu 
theosophy. If they have not Moses and the prophets, 
have they not the Sikh Gooroos ? If they have not the 



98 LETTEK XII. 

New Testament, let them be consoled ; have they not 
the words of Eam ? 

It is sad that the long experiment on behalf of 
" Deism" in the first half of the last century, should not 
have sufficed for us. It was preceded and accompanied 
by strong efforts to get rid of the historic credibility of 
the Bible, similar to those used now. The tendencies 
too of Deism then, as of Eationalism now, were entirely 
negative. Such systems may destroy, but they cannot 
construct ; and there they will always end. They may 
enable those who wish it to get rid of the Bible ; but 
they will not make people take up with the meagre 
dogmas of Herbert, or the equally meagre revelations of 
Eam! 

And while the positive effect has ever been nil, even 
the negative effect has been always transient and super- 
ficial. Bolingbroke, in his " Letters on History," and in 
his " Philosophical Works/' wrote against the credibility 
of the Bible, but especially of the Pentateuch, with a 
genius and eloquence with which it would be absurd to 
compare the miserable carping of a writer like this. 
He has been, no doubt, extensively read, but, spite both 
of genius and eloquence, he has been long since con- 
signed to the "dust and darkness of the upper shelf ;* 
while the Pentateuch still remains, and speaks to the 
world in 150 dialects. 



LETTER XII. 99 

The present book, I fancy, will go where Bolingbroke 
and a host more since, have already gone. A few years 
will shew ; perhaps indeed a few months : for I see the 
author has announced Part II., and if he fulfils his pro- 
mise, of telling us how and when the Pentateuch was 
composed, I predict that he will lose himself. He will 
sink into that huge " Serbonian bog, where armies whole 
have sunk" — the Documentary Hypothesis ; and flounder 
in the deep mud of earlier Elohist, and Jehovist, and later 
Elohist fragments. I know no reason why, if Moses be 
the author of the Pentateuch, he should not (especially 
in Genesis, where he had to do with events that occurred 
long before his time) have incorporated, under Divine 
superintendence, some fragments of previous documents. 
But when, with a view to discredit his authorship, or 
that of any one else in particular, critics attempt to 
sever completely the elements thus fused together ; to 
give a chemical analysis of the whole ; to shew pre- 
cisely how many of these documents there are, and 
where each begins or ends, or rather where each bit of 
each begins and ends ; arriving at the conclusion that 
said documents may be either two, or four, or six, or 
even ten or twelve ; that they have been put together, 
like a patchwork quilt, and at some unknown epoch be- 
tween the time of the Judges and that of the Babylonish 
captivity ; then, loud is the din of controversy, and in- 



100 LETTER XII. 

finite are the varieties of opinion. " I have found a fresh 
bit of the Elohistic document/ 5 cries one great critic ; 
" though the word Elohim does not occur, I know it by 
the style ; it begins in the middle of the thirteenth verse 
of this or that chapter, and it ends in the middle of the 
fourteenth, just at the word — ." "No such thing," 
cries a second, "it is clearly Jehovistic, though the 
word Jehovah is not there ; anybody can see that 
who knows the true genius of the writer." " You are 
both mistaken," cries a third, " it belongs to neither, as I 
have proved in a new dissertation of 150 pages. It 
belongs clearly to a junior Elohist." " I beg your 
pardon," cries a fourth, " it is nothing but a little bit of 
cement by which the final redaeteur of the documents 
has here glued his fragments together." And when it 
is to be determined at what epoch these fortuitous atoms 
came together in the Pentateuch, equally edifying is the 
variety of opinion. " No part," says one, " can be as old 
as the Judges, that is, if there ever were any Judges." 
" At least/ cries a second, " there is no trace of it before 
Samuel's time." * We must come down yet lower," says 
a third ; " Nathan or Gad may have had a hand in it." 
" Pure nonsense," cries a fourth ; " the Pentateuch was 
not known even in Solomon's time." " No, nor then," 
cries a fifth ; tc we must come down to the time of the 
Captivity ; perhaps, if Ezra were alive, he could tell us 



LETTER XII. 101 

something about it." And so you have your two, six, or ten 
documents to choose from, and compiled at any period be- 
tween the time of the Judges and the Babylonish captivity ! 
" Pray, gentlemen, agree among yourselves," an ordinary 
Christian feels inclined to say ; " it is impossible criticism 
can be worth much, which terminates in such endless 
discordances." One happy thing is, however, that when- 
ever one of these theories is combated singly, it imme- 
diately crumbles to pieces in our hands. And no wonder, 
for the learned authors of all the rest, as well as the 
advocates of the ordinary view, fall upon it. And such, 
I predict, will be the issue in the present case. 

If I may judge from one or two hints in Part I., I 
fancy our author will endeavour to prove that the Penta- 
teuch is a series of fictions, composed as a sort of Jewish 
"Library of Useful and Entertaining Knowledge," by 
Samuel or Nathan or Gad, or all of them ; much as 
iEsop composed his "Fables," or John Bunyan his 
"Pilgrim's Progress;" that though they everywhere pro- 
test they are telling mere matter of fact, and somehow 
uniformly produce the effect that they meant to do so, and 
everywhere appeal to God that they speak in his name 
and by his authority, yet they really meant nothing of 
the kind at all : that, on the other hand, the Israelites, 
finding that all this was very delightful reading — though 
they, as well as all their forefathers, are branded and 



102 LETTER XII. 

libelled in every page, " are huffed and cuffed and dis- 
respectit," are told that they will never come to any 
good, that they will always prove an " obstinate, stiff- 
necked generation," and will at length (which has curi- 
ously come to pass) be scattered among the nations, and 
become "a hissing, a byword, and a proverb" — yet were 
so tickled with this pleasant story-book, that they were 
somehow completely taken in, fancied it was their true 
history, and forthwith handed it down, without one 
sound of protest, doubt, or repugnance, to all future 
generations, as not only true in fact, but as divinely in- 
spired ! Here is likelihood, here is wisdom ! I cannot 
say Credat Judceus, for certainly no Jew ever would or 
did believe such nonsense ; credulous scepticism alone 
is equal to that. 

Of course we Englishmen can have no difficulty 
about believing it, because we all see that John Bun- 
yan's " Pilgrim's Progress," having been written for much 
the same purposes, and having been read with intense 
entertainment, and without any of the humiliating re- 
flections which the Israelites must have felt in reading 
the Pentateuch, is now swiftly passing into the domain 
of history, and will by and by be unanimously handed 
down as simple matter of fact ! 

Seriously, however, I could as soon believe this as 
the above hypothesis. You will say, perhaps, " But how 



LETTER XII. 103 

could Bunyan's ' Pilgrim's Progress' be transformed into 
matter of fact, when he plainly tells us that he laid 
himself down, and slept, and as he slept, dreamed a 
dream." 

Very true ; and so little chance is there of fictions 
passing into fact, that this fiction has not even got so 
far as to induce the world to believe that it was a 
" dream" at all. On the contrary, the world still be- 
lieves that John Bunyan was never more " awake" than 
when he compiled his inimitable allegory. But, take 
any fictions you please ; however founded on fact, as is 
generally the case, — however instinct with genius, how- 
ever depicted " in colours dipped in heaven ;" though the 
verisimilitude be such as to justify Aristotle's criticism, 
that fictions may be truer to nature than fact itself; 
though, as the blundering Irishman said of a portrait, 
the picture may be more like than the original ; still, 
there is no tendency in time to transform it into his- 
tory. The Iliad, the Greek drama, the Mebelungen- 
lied, Shakspere's historic plays, remain, age after age, 
immovably fiction, and nothing more. They are as little 
likely to pass into history as the shadow to become 
substance. 

But critics will say, " Yes ; but it is in quasi-history, 
written in very remote times, in the twilight of thought, 
in an age of barbarism, that myth and history may be 



104 LETTER XII. 

thus confounded, and minute fragments of the former 
make a mosaic with the latter." 

Very true ; but, 1. Those who plead for the late 
compositions of the Pentateuch, preclude themselves from 
any such argument. Hard dilemma ! They are anxious 
that it should be a very late composition, that they may 
get as far away as possible from the dreaded miracles, 
and allow time for ancient tradition or invention to 
crystallize into myths; forgetting, that in avoiding this 
Scylla, they have fallen into Charybdis, and encumber 
themselves with the unprecedented phenomenon of a 
huge fiction, composed far down in the history of a 
nation, being accepted by that whole nation as its true 
history. 2. That while the g'wasi-histories, written in 
the dawn between barbarism and civilization, may con- 
tain fragments of a mythical character, the instant ten- 
dency of even an infant criticism is ignominiously to 
expel them ; they rarely abide a cursory examination 
even among the nation that gave them birth ; least of 
all can maintain a footing (as the Pentateuchal history 
has done), amongst alien races, and far distant ages and 
nations. 3. These fragments are comparatively minute 
and insignificant, and, as Bolingbroke says, are easily 
detached from the history, leaving the general current of 
events undisturbed. But, as he also acutely observes, 
if you take away the miraculous elements from the 



LETTER XII. 105 

books of Moses, all the rest vanishes with them ; the ordi- 
nary events are inextricably entwined with and grow 
out of them. Take away the miracles, and you take 
away all ; — " if it be not a miraculous history, it is a 
history of nothing." 4. I suppose no reader of common 
sense, taste, and candour, will easily prevail upon him- 
self to believe, that the literary characteristics of the 
Pentateuch are such as are ever found in any chroniclers 
of mythical and legendary history the world has yet 
seen. These last soon find their proper place, even in 
the nation that has produced them, and seldom provoke 
more than a yawn in the readers of any other nation. 
On the other hand, the spell of the Pentateuch, as that 
of the Bible generally, has been, and still is, upon the 
most various races, and exerts its potency upon the most 
refined and cultivated intellects, as well as upon the 
most rude ; upon intellects which make no difficulty 
whatever in instantly freeing themselves from all other 
myths, ancient or modern. 

I have now given you some of my reasons for pre- 
suming that Bishop Colenso cannot be the author of the 
book ascribed to him. If, in spite of all, he is, I shall 
never more be troubled with any of the alleged paradoxes 
of the Pentateuch, for they are, to me, immeasurably 
lighter. — Believe me, my dear friend, yours truly, 

Vindex. 



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